LAFCADIO   HEARN 


LAFCADIO   HKAKN 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 


By 
EDWARD   THOMAS 


BOSTON  AND    NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

1912 


BUTLER  &  TANNER, 

THE  SELWOOD  PRINTING  WORKS, 

FROME,  AND  LONDON. 


Co 
THE  BARD  GWILI 


250641 


ABBREVIATIONS 

B,  I.  and  II.  .  Vol.  I.  and  II.  of  Miss  Bisland's 
Lafcadio  Hearn.  Life  and  Let 
ters  (Houghton  Mifflin  and 
Constable). 

B.  III.  .  .  Miss  Bisland's  "Lafcadio  Hearn  : 
Japanese  Letters  (Houghton 
Mifflin  and  Constable). 

N.  .  .  .  .  Mr.  Yone  Noguchi's  Lafcadio 
Hearn  in  Japan  (Elkin  Ma- 
thews). 

G.M.G.  „  .  Dr.  G.  M.  Gould's  Concerning 
Lafcadio  Hearn  (G.  W.  Jacobs 
and  Fisher  Unwin). 

T,  J.  .  .  .  Professor  Basil  Hall  Chamber 
lain's  Things  Japanese  (John 
Murray). 

L.R,  .  .  .  Letters  from  the  .Raven  (Brentano's 
and  Constable). 

C.G.  .  .  .  Some  Chinese  Ghosts  (Little 
Brown  and  Kegan  Paul) . 

C.N,  .  .  .  One  of  Cleopatra's  Nights  (Bren- 
tano's). 

C Chita  (Harpers). 

F.W.I.  .  .  Two  Years  in  the  French  West 
Indies  (Harpers). 

G Glimpses  of    Unfamiliar     Japan 

(Houghton  Mifflin  and  Kegan 
Paul). 
7 


ABBREVIATIONS 

O Out    of    the    East     (Houghton 

Mifflin  and  Kegan  Paul). 
K Kokoro   (Houghton  Mifflin    and 

Kegan  Paul). 
B.F.      .     .     .     Gleanings     in     Buddha     Fields 

(Houghton  Mifflin  and  Kegan 

Paul). 
E.  and  Rt  .      .     Exotics  and  Retrospectives  (Little 

Brown  and  Kegan  Paul). 
O.  J.      ,      .      .In  Ghostly  Japan  (Little  Brown 

and  Kegan  Paul). 
S Shadowings  (Little    Brown    and 

Kegan  Paul). 
J.M.     .      .      .     A    Japanese    Miscellany   (Little 

Brown  and  Kegan  Paul). 
Kot.      .     .      .     Kotto  (MacmiUan  Co.). 
Kw.      .      .      .     Kwaidan  (Houghton  Mifflin  'and 

Kegan  Paul). 

J.    .      .      .      .     Japan :  an  attempt  at   Interpre 
tation  (Macmillan  Co.). 
M.W.    .      .      .     The    Milky     Way      (Houghton 

Mifflin  and  Constable). 

Note. — I  thank  the  publishers  of  these  books  for 
their  permission  to  make  the  quotations  from  them 
which  are  indicated  in  the  text. 


IN  one  of  his  last  essays  Lafeadio  Hearn 
said  that  he  would  like  to  be  buried  in  the 
old  Buddhist  graveyard  behind  his  garden. 
He  liked  the  place  for  its  beauty  and  anti 
quity,  and  for  its  great  bell.  This  bell  had 
"  a  quaintness  of  tone  which  wakens  feel 
ings,  so  strangely  far  away  from  all  the 
nineteenth  century  part  of  me,  that  the 
faint  blind  stirrings  of  them,  make  one 
afraid — deliciously  afraid  "  :  x  it  caused  "  a 
striving  and  a  fluttering  in  the  abyssal  part 
of  my  ghost — a  sensation  as  of  memories 
struggling  to  reach  the  light  beyond  the 
obscuration  of  a  million  million  deaths  and 
births."  It  is  a  thought  easily  to  be  paral 
leled  in  any  of  his  books.  More  than  any 
other  man  he  appears  to  have  been  unable 
to  forget  "  the  dark  backward  and  abyss  " 
of  his  own  immemorial  past.  "  Is  not 
every  action  indeed  the  work  of  the  Dead 

i  Kw.  212. 
9 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

who  dwell  within  us  ?  " 2  is  a  sentence  which 
shows  what  governed  his  thinking.  He 
himself  knew  less  of  his  immediate  ancestors 
than  most  men,  but  though  he  would  not 
have  expected  any  great  illumination  from 
a  far  fuller  knowledge  he  was  fond  of  dwel 
ling  upon  his  childhood  and  origin.  How 
much  he  knew  of  them  is  uncertain.  What 
he  has  said  and  what  others  have  unearthed 
amounts  to  little — a  suggestive  and  sur 
prising  little,  though  not  enough  to  satisfy 
the  man  who  was  so  impressed  by  the  con 
tinual  resurrection  of  the  past,  that  he 
found  the  worship  of  ancestors  "  an 
extremely  righteous  thing."  3  The  Hearns 
are  said  to  have  been  a  Dorsetshire  family 
with  "a  tradition  of  gipsy  blood,"4  but 
settled  since  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century  in  Ireland.  The  head  of  the  family 
was  then  Dean  of  Cashel.  He  had  eight 
sons  who  were  soldiers,  and  of  these  one 
was  Hearn's  grandfather.  His  father  was 
Surgeon-Major  Charles  Bush  Hearn,  who 
fell  in  love  with  a  Greek  girl,  Rosa  Cerigote, 
while  he  was  in  garrison,  carried  her  off 
and  married  her.  Lafcadio,  named  from 

2  G.  396.  3  B.  II.  28.  «  B.  I.  5. 

10 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

the  island  of  his  birth,  Lefcada,  was  the 
second,  but  first  surviving,  child,  born  on 
June  27,  1850 :  his  infant  speech  was 
Romaic  and  Italian.  Surgeon-Major  Hearn 
took  his  family  to  Ireland  six  years  later, 
and  soon  afterwards  his  wife  ran  away  from 
him  or  Ireland,  never  to  return.  He 
married  again  and  Lafcadio,  being  adopted 
by  a  great-aunt,  never  saw  father  or  mother 
after  the  age  of  seven.  He  remembered 
that  his  mother  was  small,  black-haired  and 
black-eyed,  and  that  only  once  did  he  feel 
glad  with  his  father.  He  favoured  his 
mother,  and  sometimes  thought  there  was 
nothing  in  him,  physical  or  mental,  of  his 
father ;  but  Miss  Bisland  says  that  the 
children  of  his  father's  second  wife  were 
much  like  Lafcadio,  with  "  dark  skins, 
delicate  aquiline  profiles,  eyes  deeply  set  in 
arched  orbits,  and  short,  supple,  well-knit 
figures."  5  He  himself  said  that  he  got  his 
impatience,  sensitiveness  and  affection  from 
his  mother,  and  what  pride  and  persistence 
he  had  from  his  father. 

The  great- aunt  who  adopted  Hearn  was 
a  Mrs.  Brenan,  "  widow  of  a  wealthy  Irish- 

s  B.  I.  11. 
11 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

man,  by  whom  she  had  been  converted  to 
Romanism."  Hearn  himself  is  the  only 
authority  for  what  we  learn  of  his  life  with 
her,  in  Wales  and  Ireland,  and  what  he  has 
said  is  often  in  a  heightened  tone  which 
suggests  a  considerable  developing  process, 
conscious  or  not.  He  says  that  he  was 
"  brought  up  in  a  rich  home,  surrounded 
with  every  luxury."  He  has  recalled,  in 
Kwaidan,  the  witchcraft  of  a  Welsh  or  gypsy 
harper  playing  and  singing  to  him  ;  and 
in  "  My  Guardian  Angel  "  6  how  when  he 
was  "  nearly  six "  a  cousin  made  him 
"  unhappy  in  a  new  and  irreparable  way,"  7 
by  teaching  him  about  Hell ;  in  "  Night 
mare-touch  "  how  his  fear  of  darkness  was 
cruelly  overridden  ;  8  and  in  "  Idolatry  " 
how  he  got  to  know  the  Greek  mythology, 
and  had  an  intuition  "  that  the  gods  had 
been  belied  because  they  were  beautiful," 
and  how  they  made  his  world  glow  again  and 
so  absorbed  him  that  his  elders  excised  the 
breasts  of  the  nude  female  figures  and 
concealed  some  lines  with  cross-strokes  of 
the  pen,  and  others  with  bathing  drawers. 
These  autobiographical  voluntaries  are  in 

6  B.  I.  16.  7  B.  I.  27,  8  S.  238. 

12 


LAFCADIO   HEARN 

keeping  with  Hearn's  belief  that  he  was 
"  Of  a  meridional  race  ...  a  Greek,"  who 
felt  rather  with  the  Latin  than  the  Anglo- 
Saxon.  He  boasted  also  of  being,  as  a  small 
boy,  very  mischievous  and  fond  of  kissing 
beautiful  girls,  and  later  of  desiring  the  love 
of  succubi. 

In  "  Nightmare  Touch "  he  speaks  of, 
being  at  a  "  children's  boarding  school," 
of  which  we  know  nothing  more.  He  says 
that  he  "  passed  some  years  in  Catholic 
colleges "  9  but  was  not  a  Catholic.  He 
may  have  been  at  a  "  Jesuit  college  in  the 
north  of  France,"  and  was  certainly  at 
Ushaw,  a  Roman  Catholic  school  at  Dur 
ham.  Here  he  is  remembered  to  have 
"  announced  his  disbelief  in  the  Bible," 
and  is  described  as  a  boy  with  a  taste  for 
drawing,  fond  of  poetry  and  books  of  travel 
and  adventure,  "  very  much  in  earnest," 
sensitive,  and  "  a  very  lovable  character, 
extremely  sympathetic  and  sincere."  He 
speaks  himself  of  having  a  "  religious 
tutor,"  and  though  he  told  his  brother  he 
was  not  a  Catholic  he  told  the  unknown  of 
his  "  Letters  to  a  Lady  "  that  he  "  was  once 

9  B.    I.    33. 
13 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

a  Catholic — at  least,  my  guardians  tried  to 
make  me  so.  .  .  ."  Evidently  he  liked 
to  dwell  upon  his  sufferings  and  rebellions. 
In  "  Gothic  Horror "  10  he  describes  his 
ghostly  fear  in  an  old  church ;  in  a  letter 
to  Professor  Chamberlain ll  his  fear  of 
ghosts  and  his  crying  loudly  at  the  sound 
of  a  tune  played  "  in  the  midst  of  a  fashion 
able  gathering."  Whether  it  is  due  or  not 
to  unconscious  literary  influence,  his  recol 
lections  of  childhood  remind  us  of  De 
Quincey's  autobiography,  as  some  of  his 
later  recollections  recall  the  "  Confes 
sions." 

He  is  supposed  to  have  left  Ushaw  after 
and  in  consequence  of  an  accident  which 
blinded  one  eye.  He  was  already  "  very 
near-sighted  "  and  when  he  was  only  eight, 
says  Dr.  Gould,  the  right  eyeball  so  con 
spicuous  in  his  portraits  was  "  about  as 
large  and  protruding  as  in  later  life."  12  It 
is  not  known  what  happened  to  him  during 
the  next  three  years.  He  says  that  his  rich 
relatives  refused  to  pay  anything  to  help 
him  to  finish  his  education,  that  he  had  to 
become  a  servant,  and  that  he  spent  two 

10  S.  213.         "  B.  III.  212.         12  B.  I.  37. 
14 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

years  of  sickness  in  bed.  A  schoolfellow 
has  said  that  Hearn  suffered  extreme 
poverty  in  London,  and  in  a  fragment 
called  "  Stars  "  he  has  described  himself 
sleeping  in  a  hayloft  for  the  sake  of  heat 
from  the  breath  of  horses  below.  On  the 
other  hand  he  told  his  friend,  Mr.  Watkin, 
that  he  had  "  dissipated  ten  years  in  Latin 
and  Greek,  and  stuff."  13 

When  he  was  nineteen  it  is  certain  that 
he  was  penniless  in  New  York,  and  in  the 
same  year,  1869,  working  in  Cincinnati  for 
a  Syrian  pedlar,  then  as  a  typesetter  and 
proof-reader.     He    earned    the    name    of 
"  Old  Semicolon  "  by  his  exceptional  care 
for  what  seemed  to  him  right  in  printing. 
In  1874  he  was  a  general  reporter  on  the 
Inquirer    at    Cincinnati.14     He    advanced 
from  market  reports  to  descriptions  of  a 
murder  and  of  Cincinnati  as  seen  from  the 
top  of  St.  Peter's  Cathedral  spire,  where 
he  was  hauled  by  a  steeple- jack.     He  was 
hardworking  and  sat  for  hours  at  his  table, 
"  his  great  bulbous  eyes  resting  as  close  to 
the    paper    as    his    nose    would    permit." 
Sometimes  there  were  fourteen  or  fifteen 

13  L.  R.  108.  "  B.  I.  50,  83. 

16 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

pages  by  him  in  one  number  of  the  Inquirer. 
He  also  worked  for  the  Commercial,  but 
is  said  to  have  been  discharged  because  he 
sought  a  licence  for  an  open  marriage  with 
a  coloured  woman.  He  haunted  dark 
corners  of  the  city  and  knew  the  negroes. 
He  also  made  friends  with  a  musical  critic, 
an  artist,  and  a  printer.  The  printer,  Mr. 
Watkin,  called  him  the^Raven  on  account 
of  his  black  hair  and  his  love  of  gloom, 
horror,  and  Edgar  Allan  Poe./  Little  of  his 
writing  belonging  to  this  period  is  known. 
He  edited  and  for  the  most  part  wrote  a 
comic  and  satiric  Sunday  paper,  called  Ye 
Giglampz.  Here  he  was  writing  on  subjects 
and  in  a  tone  so  unsuitable  that  he  is  said 
to  have  done  nothing  worth  reading.  He 
has,  however,  been  praised  for  the  descrip 
tion  in  the  Commercial  of  a  murdered  and 
burnt  corpse.  Such  description  awakens 
chiefly  surprise  that  a  man  who  pushed  his 
finger  into  a  boiled  human  brain  to  learn  its 
consistency  should  have  troubled  the  same 
hand  with  a  pen.  It  is  uncertain  whether 
the  adventure  was  due  to  natural  curiosity 
or  to  a  literary  pursuit  of  the  unusual  and  of 
words  to  suit  it.  In  the  small  hours  "  after 
16 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

the  rough  work  of  the  police  rounds"16 
he  was  translating  Gautier,  and  One  of 
Cleopatra's  Nights,  published  in  1882,  is 
said  to  belong  to  this  period. 

Apparently  the  negress  was  not  the  only 
subject  of  difference  between  him  and 
Cincinnati,  and  in  1877  he  left  it  for  New 
Orleans.  On  the  way  he  spent  some  time 
at  Memphis,  staying  in  "a  great  big 
dreary  room,"  of  a  "  great  dreary  house,"  18 
which  he  describes  so  as  to  create  an  impres 
sion  like  that  of  the  house  in  Greek  Street 
where  De  Quincey  lodged.  The  dead  bells 
had  been  ringing  for  a  general's  funeral, 
and  he  cried  "  a  good  deal  of  nights,"  he 
says,  as  he  did  when  "  a  college  boy  returned 
from  vacation." 

Arriving  at  New  Orleans  he  was  very  poor, 
but  he  seems  for  the  first  time  to  have  been 
at  home  in  a  city  which  was  "  the  paradise 
of  the  South  " — he  said,  "  I  never  beheld 
anything  so  beautiful  and  so  sad."  He  felt 
that  he  could  never  leave  it  for  the  North, 
so  much  did  he  feel  its  age,  its  forsaken  state- 
liness,  and  its  quiet.  That  he  would  not  stay 
in  it  for  ever  was  clear  from  his  heart  "  like  a 

15  B.  I.  61.  is  L.R.  36. 

17  B 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

bird,  fluttering  impatiently  for  the  migrat 
ing  season."  He  would  like  to  be  a  swal 
low  with  "  a  summer  nest  in  the  ear  of  an 
Egyptian  colossus  or  a  broken  capital  of 
the  Parthenon."  He  still  contributed  to 
the  Commercial,  chiefly  letters  that  were 
unprofitably  picturesque  :  they  are  to  be 
found  in  Letters  from  the  Eaven  over  the 
signature  of  "  Ozias  Midwinter."  He  tried 
to  make  money  by  setting  up  a  five-cent 
eating  house.  At  one  time  he  thought  of 
going  to  Japan — "  splendid  field  in  Japan." 
But  he  found  journalistic  work  on  the 
Daily  Item,  reading  proofs,  writing  edi 
torials  and  occasionally  a  translation  or 
original  sketch.  In  1881  the  Times-Demo 
crat  of  New  Orleans  gave  him  work  and  a  new 
opportunity,  by  printing  week  after  week 
-  his  translations  from  Gautier,  Maupassant, 
Pierre  Loti.  About  two  hundred  of  these 
translations  appeared.  He  contributed 
also  other  translations  and  many  studies 
and  stories.  His  three  books,  One  of 
Cleopatra's  Nights,  Stray  Leaves  from  Strange 
Literature,  and  Some  Chinese  Ghosts,  were 
all  collected  from  the  Times-Democrat. 
He  was  getting  older,  "  less  despondent  but 
18 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

less  hopeful  .  .  .  more  systematic  and  per 
haps  a  good  deal  more  selfish.  Not  strictly 
economical,  but  coming  to  it  steadily,  and 
in  leisure  hours  studying  the  theories  of 
the  East,  the  poetry  of  antique  India." 
About  1884  he  was  to  meet  the  First  Prin 
ciples  of  Herbert  Spencer,  which  gave  him 
"  unspeakable  comfort  "  and  an  "  eternal 
reopening  of  the  Great  Doubt,"  made 
pessimism  "  ridiculous  "  and  taught  "  a 
new  reverence  for  all  kinds  of  faith." 

New  Orleans  was  the  first  step  towards 
Japan.  The  second  was  the  West  Indies. 
In  1884  he  visited  Grande  Isle  in  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico,  a  tropical  island  which  inspired 
his  romance  called  Chita,  and  made  him 
say  that  "  One  lives  here.  In  New  Orleans  , 
one  only  exists."  The  chapters  of  this 
book  as  they  appeared  in  the  Times- 
Democrat,  helped  him  to  a  commission 
from  Messrs.  Harper  which  took  him  in 
1887  to  the  Windward  Islands  and  to 
British  Guiana.  His  travel-sketches  ap 
peared  in  Harper's  Magazine.  After  an 
interval  of  only  two  months  he  returned  to 
St.  Pierre  in  Martinique.  His  love  for  the 
tropics  was  so  strong  that  he  wrote  from 
19 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

Japan  in  1890  expressing  a  hope  that  in  a 
year  or  two  he  could  earn  enough  to 
"  realize  his  dream  of  a  home  in  the  West 
Indies."  17  He  thought  that  his  real  field 
was  in  the  Latin  countries,  and  his  dream 
was  "  to  haunt  the  old  crumbling  Portuguese 
and  Spanish  cities,  and  steam  up  the 
Amazon  or  Orinoco,  and  get  romances  no 
body  else  could  find."  18  The  dream  is  elo 
quently  expressed  in  his  Two  Years  in  the 
French  West  Indies  and  his  letters.  In 
1887  he  half  believed  that  he  was  returning 
to  the  tropics  for  ever.  He  was  weary  of 
the  whole  Anglo-Saxon  system  of  life  and 
civilization.  When  he  was  back  in  New 
York  in  1889  he  wanted  to  get  back  "  among 
the  monkeys  and  the  parrots,  under  a 
violet  sky  among  green  peaks  and  an  eter 
nally  lilac  and  hike-warm  sea — where  cloth 
ing  is  superfluous  and  reading  too  much 
of  an  exertion — where  everybody  sleeps 
14  hours  out  of  the  24,"  as  in  Japan  he 
envied  a  friend  "  the  rich,  divine,  moist,  life- 
sapping  and  life-giving  heat  of  the  tropics  "  ; 
and  this,  in  spite  of  "  the  development  of 
morbid  nervous  sensibility  to  material 

i'  L.  E.  93.        !»  B.  L  105. 
20 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

impressions,  and  absolute  loss  of  thinking 
power,  accompanied  by  numbing  and  cloud 
ing  of  memory."  He  declared  that  white 
faces  became  "  ghostly  terrible  "  19  to  him, 
and  he  felt  the  "  black  man's  terror  of  the 
white."  In  New  York  he  was  working  at 
his  translation  of  Le  Crime  de  Sylvestre 
Bonnard  for  purposes  of  immediate  gain. 
Then  he  accepted  an  offer  to  go  to  Japan 
and  write  articles  on  his  journey  for  Messrs. 
Harper.  He  left  on  May  8, 1890.  Hethrewover 
his  journalistic  work  and  became  a  school 
master,  teaching  English  thenceforward  with 
a  short  interval,  until  the  year  before  his 
death.  In  less  than  nine  months  after 
leaving  New  York  he  had  married  a  Japan 
ese  wife.  By  her  he  had  two  sons,  and  he  , 
enjoyed  a  home  life  of  great  sweetness  and 
tranquillity.  Among  Japanese  he  could 
pass  as  only  "  a  curious-looking  "  Japanese 
from  some  remote  part  of  the  empire  ;  and 
he  soon  learned  to  squat  instead  of  sitting. 
In  1896  he  became  a  Japanese  citizen. 
Now  and  then  he  thought  of  journeys  to  far 
countries,  and  just  before  his  death  he  was 
thinking  of  going  to  the  United  States  to 

"  B.  III.  271, 
21 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

lecture.  But  except  that  he  was  forced 
by  the  cold  climate  to  leave  a  congenial 
place,  Matsue,  he  suffered  only  the  troubles 
of  every  author  who  is  not  an  exemplary 
pachyderm  :  "At  home,"  he  said,  "  every 
thing  is  sweet  "  ;  and  again  :  "  It  is  a  very 
gentle  world.  It  is  only  happy  when  I  am 
happy."  He  was  not  a  born  schoolmaster, 
nor  continuously  cheerful  at  the  work,  but 
he  won  affection,  and  his  difficulties  were 
noble  and  created  by  his  own  high  standards. 
This  work  did  not  rob  him  of  spirit  to  plan 
or  strength  to  execute,  and  it  gave  him  not 
only  a  sufficient  wage,  but  opportunities. 
He  saw  many  things  which  the  professional 
author  might  have  missed,  and  his  students 
gave  him  direct  help  as  well  as  indirect. 
His  home  life  made  him  younger  by  taking 
away  the  youthful  consciousness  of  age. 
When  he  sang  a  child's  song,  says  Mrs. 
Hearn,  "  he  looked  as  if  he  never  knew  the 
existence  of  the  worries  of  the  world."  20 
Though  getting  grey  at  forty-three,  he  was 
much  stronger  than  at  thirty.  He  had 
begun  by  wishing  to  be  reincarnated  as  a 
Japanese  baby,  had  passed  through  a  period 

20  N.  67. 

22 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

when  Japan  gave  him  no  thrill  and  he 
knew  it,  and  had  reached  a  deep  studious 
and  domestic  ease.  His  Japanese  books 
and  letters  are  the  sole  and  sufficient 
authority  for  these  years  from  1890  until 
his  death  in  1904.  Hitherto  he  had  been 
experimenting  and  choosing  his  material 
quite  consciously  and  elaborating  it  quite 
consciously.  Now  his  material  began  to 
be  so  abundant  and  insistent  that  he  might 
seem  to  be  doing  nothing  but  arrange  it. 


23 


II 


HEARN  was  forty  when  he  reached  Japan. 
He  had  been  drifting  about  the  world, 
rather  more  obviously  a  pawn  of  circum 
stances  than  other  men.  Nothing  could 
stop  him  except  sickness  or  poverty.  He 
had  made  some  friends  and  acquired  some 
books,  but  there  can  have  been  few  less 
substantial  men  than  he.  In  his  unfriendly 
way,  due  to  his  having  heard  that  while 
Hearn  was  writing  to  him  in  love  and  trust 
he  was  speaking  of  him  "  with  bitterness 
and  malevolent  injustice,"  Dr.  Gould  says 
that  except  in  "  the  pursuit  of  literary 
excellence,  Hearn  had  no  character.  His 
was  the  most  unresisting,  most  echo-like 
mind  I  have  ever  known.  He  was  a  perfect 
chameleon  ;  he  took  for  the  time  the  colour 
of  his  surroundings."  l  This  probably 
means  little  more  than  that  Hearn  was 
abashed  before  Dr.  Gould,  and  was  dimly 

1  G.  M.  G. 
24 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

aware  of  what  the  doctor  thought  of  him. 
It  was  to  Dr.  Gould  that  Hearn  said : 
"  You  have  given  me  a  soul  "  :  it  was  of 
Dr.  Gould  that  Hearn  inquired,  eagerly 
humbling  himself  :  "  If  a  man  lives  like  a 
rat  for  twenty  or  twenty-five  years  he  must 
have  acquired  something  of  the  disposition 
peculiar  to  rodents,  mustn't  he "  ?  Yet 
even  Dr.  Gould,  sadly  compelled  to  accuse 
Hearn  of  having  had  "  no  romance,  no 
love,  no  happiness,  no  interesting  personal 
data  upon  which  he  could  draw  to  give  his 
imagination  play,  vividness,  actuality,  or 
even  the  semblance  of  reality,"  even  Dr. 
Gould  who  lamented  :  "  How  often  is  the 
pathos  of  life  sadly  exaggerated  by  giving 
way  to  foolish,  needless  and  degrading  in 
herited  instincts  at  the  expense  of  the  higher 
life  and  usefulness,"  even  Dr.  Gould  calls 
Hearn  an  "  affectionate  and  sweet-natured 
man."  This  is  the  natural  man  in  Dr. 
Gould  confessing  that  Hearn  had  got  char 
acter.  Along  with  this  confession  should 
be  used  Miss  Bisland's  statement  that  his 
physical  cleanliness  was  like  that  of  "  un- 
contaminated  savages  and  wild  animals, 
which  has  the  air  of  being  so  essential  and 
25 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

innate  as  to  make  the  best-groomed  men 
and  domesticated  beasts  almost  frowzy  by 
contrast."  2  She  calls  him  about  five  foot 
three  in  height,  and  unusually  broad  and 
powerful,  but  graceful  and  light  in  move 
ment  :  others  speak  of  his  silent  feline  step. 
He  calls  himself  a  swarthy,  very  short, 
square- set  fellow  of  about  140  pounds 
when  in  good  health  ;  36  f  inches  round  the 
chest :  he  afterwards  became  corpulent 
and  stooped.  He  was  shy,  but  composed 
and  dignified,  presumably  when  he  was 
surrounded.  He  shrank  from  meetings 
and  sometimes  fled  from  them.  He  walked 
about  as  he  talked,  a  habit  which  his  elder  son 
also  had,  "  touching  softly  the  furnishings 
of  the  room  or  the  flowers  of  the  garden," 
and  he  poured  out  "  a  stream  of  brilliant  talk 
in  a  soft,  half-apologetic  tone,  with  con 
stant  deference  to  the  opinions  of  his  com 
panions."  .  .  .  His  head  was  "  bold  and 
delicate  "  in  profile,  though  some  thought 
the  chin  weak  ;  his  brow  "  was  square  and 
full  above  the  eyes,"  his  complexion  "  a 
clear,  smooth  olive,"  or  "  a  little  brownish," 
and  his  skin  "  rather  hairy."  His  large 

a  B.  I.  77. 
26 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

seeing  eye  was  brown  and  heavily  lashed  ; 
the  other  was  filmed  or  pearled,  and  was 
often  concealed  by  his  hand  during  con 
versation.  He  was  afraid  that  women 
were  repelled  by  this  eye,  but  though  shy 
with  them  was  one  who  took  "  a  foolish 
fancy  to  every  damozel  in  his  path."  He 
used  a  handglass  for  near  things  and  a  tele 
scope  for  distant ;  otherwise,  says  Dr. 
Gould,  "  the  world  beyond  a  few  feet  was 
not  a  three  dimensioned  one ;  it  was 
coloured  .  .  .  but  it  was  formless  and  flat, 
without  much  thickness  or  solidity,  and 
almost  without  perspective."  Dr.  Gould 
believes  that  the  result  of  this  was  "  what 
it  was,"  i.e.  that  in  so  far  as  what  he  saw 
was  different  from  what  other  men  saw  it 
was  due  to  the  difference  between  his  sight 
and  other  men's.  Dr.  Gould  says  nothing 
to  explain  Hearn's  own  statement :  that 
"  a  landscape  necessarily  suggests  less  to 
the  keen-sighted  man  than  to  the  myope. 
The  keener  the  view  the  less  depth  in  the 
impression  produced."  It  is  true  that 
Hearn  dwelt  much  in  his  books  upon 
physical  appearances,  but  that  was  due  in 
a  large  part  to  the  literary  influence  of 
27 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

Gautier  and  others,  and  his  power  in  this 
department  is  not  so  great  as  to  suggest  any 
useful  peculiarity  of  vision.  If  anything, 
it  has  sometimes  a  bad  effect,  that  of  undue 
emphasis  upon  detail,  which  may  have  been 
due  to  seeing  a  thing  or  a  group  bit  by  bit 
instead  of  as  a  proportioned  and  related 
whole.  Heat,  he  said,  was  good  for  his 
sight,  and  his  sight  thus  chose  his  landscape. 
It  also  unfitted  him  for  many  forms  of 
physical  exercise.  But  he  was  a  good 
swimmer  and  loved  the  water,  and  one  of 
his  best  pictures  of  himself  is  in  "  At 
Yaidzu,"  3  where  he  swims  out  at  night 
to  the  fleet  of  tiny  lighted  ghost-ships  after 
the  Festival  of  the  Dead,  watching  and 
questioning : 

"  Are  not  we  ourselves  as  lanterns 
launched  upon  a  deeper  and  a  dimmer  sea, 
and  ever  separating  further  and  further  one 
from  another  as  we  drift  to  the  inevitable 
dissolution  .  .  .  ?  " 

He  liked  going  to  Yaidzu  for  his  summer 
vacation,  to  swim  and  "  rough  it  "  among 
the  fishermen.  "  He  smoked  incessantly," 
says  Mrs.  Hearn,  "  and  he  could  not  leave 

3  G.  J.  232. 

28 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

his  cigar  behind  even  while  swimming  "  :  4 
when  he  touched  the  shore  by  a  paper 
lantern  put  to  mark  a  landing  spot  "  he  was 
the  happiest  man  alive."  Mrs.  Hearn  saw 
in  his  smoking  a  religious  act,  and  says  : 
"  I  always  wondered  when  I  saw  him 
smoking,  what  heavenly  delight  he  felt  with 
his  pipe."  5  He  began  by  living  as  a  good 
appetite  proposed,  but  became  of  necessity 
regular  and  careful,  with  very  rare  "  de 
baucheries  of  beefsteak,  whiskey  and  lemon 
ade,  gin,  ginger  ale  and  beer."  His  letters 
express  a  somewhat  unusual  liveliness  of 
delight  in  the  company  of  men  whom  he 
was  at  ease  with.  "  Loving  thanks  for 
yesterday's  extraordinary  enjoyableness 
and  for  all  things,"  he  writes  to  a  friend  in 
1898,  and  again :  "  I  shall  not  thank  you 
for  my  happy  two  days,  and  all  the  beau 
tiful  things  that  you  '  so  beautifully  did.' 
But  I  felt  as  if  the  sky  had  become 
more  blue  .  .  .  than  could  really  be  the 
case,"  and  the  phrases  suggest  a  boyish 
love  of  being  "  treated."  To  the  same 
friend  he  writes  about  "  the  most  precious 
photographs,"  asks  for  "  the  one  with  the 

4  N.  82.  «  N.  38, 

29 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

full  dress  hat  on,"  and  says  :  "  I  just  love 
it.  "  6  Twenty  years  before  he  had  de 
scribed  himself  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Watkin 
as  feeling  "  a  little  blue  and  accordingly 
affectionate.  ...  I  write  extremely  often 
because  I  feel  alone  and  extremely  alone. 
By  and  by,  if  I  get  well,  I  shall  write  only 
by  weeks  ;  and  with  time  perhaps  only  by 
months  ;  and  when  at  last  comes  the  rush 
of  business  .  .  .  only  by  years — until  the 
times  and  places  of  old  friendship  are  for 
gotten."  7  It  is  certain  that  he  did  forget 
friends  and  probable  that  he  did  not  make 
the  customary  efforts  not  to  do  so,  being 
affectionate,  quick  and  with  no  morbid  or 
diffused  sense  of  responsibility  except  to 
his  family,  himself  and  his  work.  Pro 
fessor  Chamberlain  attributes  his  abrupt 
way  of  dropping  friends  to  idealism : 
"  Friends  when  he  first  made  them  were 
for  him  more  than  mortal  men,"  and  he 
"  poured  out  at  their  feet  all  the  passionate 
emotionalism  of  his  Greek  nature,"  but 
discovering  feet  of  clay  and  resenting  a 
difference  from  his  philosophical  opinions 
he  turned  away ;  and  he  himself  "  was  a 

e  B.  II.  368,  375.  1  L,  E.  39. 

30 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

greater  sufferer  from  all  this  than  any  one 
else ;  for  he  possessed  the  affectionate 
disposition  of  a  child."  8 

Bound  up  with  this  quick  passionateness 
was  his  sensitiveness,  though  sometimes 
his  style  exaggerates  this,  as  when  he  says 
that  the  contemplation  of  the  big  book 
which  might  be  written  of  incense  is  "  terri 
fying."  He  was,  says  his  wife,  "  too 
enthusiastic  for  beauty,  for  which  he  wept, 
and  for  which  he  rejoiced,  and  for  which 
he  was  angry."  9  His  eyes  wore  "  a  look 
of  fearful  enthusiasm  "  as  she  told  him  ghost 
stories.  The  howling  of  a  dog  made  him 
"  indefinably,  superstitiously  afraid."  10 
Sometimes  his  wife  thought  him  mad, 
"  because  he  saw  things  that  were  not  and 
heard  things  that  were  not."  1X  As  a  child 
he  had  seen  and  felt  "  shadowy  dark-robed 
figures,  capable  of  atrocious  self-distor 
tion  "  12  and  of  thrilling  him,  with  a  "  sort 
of  abominable  electricity."  He  sorrowed 
for  the  cutting  down  of  trees.  He  was  very 
tender  with  animals,  particularly  cats,  and 
one  cat  was  so  delightful  to  him  that  he 

*  B.  I.  59.         9  B.  I.  145.  10  G.  J.  135. 

11  B.  I.  153.          12  s.  14. 

31 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

forgot  the  fleas  of  his  lodging ;  but  he  had 
no  unusual  sympathy  with  animals,  or  he 
would  never  have  written  of  the  "  great 
fun  "  13  of  feeding  kites  with  "  dead  rats 
or  mice  which  have  been  caught  in  traps 
over  night  and  subsequently  drowned." 

He  had  evidently  been  made  to  feel  him 
self  an  exceptional  being.  In  1892  he 
imagines  his  conscience  saying  to  him,  on 
the  subject  of  a  woman  in  a  story  :  "  Your 
ancestors  were  not  religious  people  :  you 
lack  constitutional  morality.  That's  why 
you  are  poor,  and  unsuccessful,  and  void 
of  mental  balance,  and  an  exile  in  Japan. 
You  know  you  cannot  be  happy  in  an 
English  moral  community.  You  are  a 
fraud — a  vile  Latin — a  vicious  French- 
hearted  scalawag  ;  "  14  and  he  cries  :  "  Vive 
le  monde  antique."  Four  years  later  he 
is  saying  that  with  an  emotional  nature  a 
man  is  happier  among  Latins  :  "I  confess 
that  I  can  only  bear  the  uncommon  types 
of  Englishmen,  Germans  and  Americans — 
the  conventional  types  simply  drive  me 
wild.  On  the  other  hand  I  can  feel  at 
home  with  even  a  villain,  if  he  be  Spaniard, 

"  a.  379.  "  B.  H.  85. 

32 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

Italian,  or  French."  15     He  said  that  the 
English  were  "  mere  sucking  babes  in  the 
knowledge   of   art  as   compared  with  the 
Latins."  16,    He  was  often  "  hungry  for  a 
sensation,"    from    a    picture,    a   flower,    a 
temple,  or  from  a  book  which  kept  him 
from  talking  because  he  "  wanted  to  enjoy 
the  pleasure  of  the  ghostly  pain."  17     He 
was  rather  fond  of  describing  himself  as 
one   of   the   "  small   people   without   great 
wills  and  great  energies."     But  he  suffered 
from  melancholy  and  even  from  remorse. 
When  he  saw  his  wife  suffering  before  the 
birth  of  the  first  child,  he  often  begged  her 
forgiveness  for  her  suffering  and  said  that 
he    would    "  atone    with    his    writing."  18 
He  had  sobered  down,  it  may  be,  chiefly 
by  the  help  of  an  instinctive  feeling  that 
his  power  must  be  concentrated  upon  his 
work,  as  that  work  became  more  clear  to 
him.     But   he   did   not   turn   round   upon 
himself.     He    thought    in    1888,   and  con 
tinued  to  think,  that  "  what  we  term  the 
finer  moral  susceptibilities  signify  a  more 
complex  and  perfect   evolution   of  purely 

!«  B.  II.  300.  i'  B.  III.  393. 

*7  B.  III.  60.  is  N.61, 

33  0 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

physical  sensitiveness."  In  1893  he  wrote  : 
"  All  this  woman-worship  and  sex- worship 
is  tending  to  develop  to  a  high  degree  cer 
tain  moral  qualities.  As  the  pleasure  of 
colour  has  been  developed  out  of  percep 
tions  created  by  appetite,  so  out  of  vague 
I  sense  of  physical  charm  a  sense  of  spiritual 
charm  is  being  evolved."  19  He  asked  if  a 
work  of  art  ought  not  "  to  make  us  feel 
that  there  are  things  which  it  were  beau 
tiful  to  die  for,"  but  it  must,  he  said, 
stir  in  us  "  the  sensuous  life  .  .  .  the  life 
of  desire."  20  He  thought  sensualism  good 
"  because  it  softens,"  but  also  because  it 
exists ;  for  he  came  more  and  more  to  see 
with  equanimity  the  orchestration  of  all 
things  to  an  infinite  music,  "  every  school 
contributing  some  tone,  some  colour — else 
unobtainable — to  that  mighty  future  scale 
of  emotional  harmonies  of  which  the  depths 
and  the  heights  are  still  but  faintly  guessed 
at  by  us."  21  He  told  his  Japanese  pupils 
simply  that  the  man  of  genius  was  one 
"  in  whom  brain  has  been  developed  at  the 
cost  of  bodyr— in  whom  the  nervous  system 

«  B.  III.   80.  20  B.  III.  xliv. 

21  B.  III.  98. 

34 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

has  a  delicacy  and  a  sensitiveness  far  beyond 
the  average  person.  ...  It  is  much  more 
difficult  or  him  to  control  his  feelings  than 
it  is  for  the  average  man,  because  his  feelings 
are  much  stronger  and  because  the  control 
ling  machinery  of  will  is  less  developed  in 
him."  22  This  is  the  man  who  loved  the 
tropics  although,  or  because,  they  develop 
"  morbid  sensibility  to  material  impres 
sions  and  absolute  lack  of  thinking  power." 
Great  heat  made  him  feel  young,  and  in 
1894  he  said  :  "  If  I  could  be  where  it  is 
always  hot  I  think  I  should  live  to  dry  up 
and  blow  away."  23  When  a  friend  was 
suffering  from  depression  and  lassitude  he 
sent  him  words  of  serious  advice :  "I 
would  indulge  myself  if  I  were  you  ...  I 
would  give  that  digestion  plenty  of  work 
with  claret  and  beef  and  puddings  and  pies 
and  liqueurs.  And  I  would  smoke  cigars ; 
and  I  would  drink  brandy."  Vive  le 
monde  antique !  It  is  not  to  be  doubted 
that  he  reached  middle  age  soon  after  Her 
bert  Spencer  dissipated  "  that  positive 
scepticism  that  imposes  itself  upon  an 
undisciplined  mind,"  24  and  having  said 
22  N,  23  B.  in.  24  B.  I  366. 
35 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

that  he  believes  "  the  mass  of  humanity  is 
good,"  he  adds  that  "  every  man  must  so 
think  who  has  suffered  much  and  reached 
middle  life."  He  came,  by  himself,  to  the 
conclusion  that  "  there  is  no  divine  love 
save  the  love  of  man  for  man ;  that  we 
have  no  All-Father,  no  Saviour,  no  angel 
guardians  ;  that  we  have  no  possible  refuge 
but  in  ourselves."  25 

25  o.  180. 


36 


Ill 


HEARN  was  a  natural  and  prolific  letter 
writer,  and  his  letters  from  the  beginning 
show  him  as  an  artist  in  his  tastes  and  in 
his  power  to  express  and  his  desire  to  im 
prove  his  power.  It  is  not  known  how  soon 
be  began  to  think  of  himself  as  a  writer.  If 
he  wrote  verse  as  a  boy  it  has  disappeared, 
and  his  later  verses  prove  that  he  had  no 
gift.  But  as  soon  as  his  writing  began  to 
be  printed  and  read  it  drew  attention,  be 
cause  it  was  the  work  of  one  who  by  natural 
feeling,  as  well  as  imitation,  had  developed 
his  own  standards,  different  from  the 
common  standards  accepted  by  journalists 
at  Cincinnati  as  everywhere  else.  He  is  i 
said  to  have  read  poetry  as  a  boy,  and  he 
continued  to  admire  Longfellow  and  Tenny 
son,  and  to  think  Swinburne  "  as  to  form," 
as  he  quaintly  puts  it,  "  the  greatest  ~mne- 
teenth  century  poet  of  England.'^  He  said 
that  he  liked,  not  Whitman,  but  what  Whit- 
37 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

>v/man  felt  and  failed  in  expressing. ,  As^for 
Wordsworth,  Keats  and  Shelley,  he  pre 
ferred  "  Dobson,  and  Watson  and  Lang." 
But  his  remarks  on  poetry  are  almost 
enough  to  prove  that  English  poetry  meant 
little  to  him.  He  liked  the  foreign  and  the 
fantastic  and  the  sensuou§.  He  read 
Flaubert,  Pierre  Loti,  Balzac's  Conies  Dro- 
latiques,  "  Gautier's  most  pre-Raphael  and 
wickedest  work,"  l  Swinburne,  Poe^.  Rabe 
lais,  Aldrich,  and  "  other  odd  books," 
— t;  an  agglomeration  of  exotics  and  ecceji- 
trics.J>*  He  wanted  to  get  away  from  the 
life  of  everyday  for  stories  :  "I  would  give 
anything,"  he  said  in  1883,  "  to  be  a  literary 
Columbus — to  discover  a  Romantic  America 
in  some  West  Indian  or  North  African  or 
Oriental  region.  ...  If  I  could  only  be 
come  a  Consul  at  Bagdad,  Algiers,  Ispahan, 
Benares,  Samarkand,  Nippo,  Bangkok, 
Ninh-Binh — or  any  part  of  the  world 
where  ordinary  Christians  do  not  like  to 
go  !  "  3  At  one  time  he  made  up  his  mind 
to  write  once  a  month  "  the  queerest  and 
most  outlandish  fancy  I  can  get  up,"  in 
not  more  than  two  hundred  words.  In  a 

i  L.  R.  134.         2  B.  I.  350.         3  B.  I.  294. 
38 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

jest  he  proposed  to  his  musical  friend, 
Mr.  H.  E.  Krehbiel,  books  on  the  battle 
cries  of  all  nations,  on  the  manifestation  of 
climatic  influence  in  popular  melody:,  on 
the  music  of  nomad  races,  on  the  peculiar 
characteristic  of  erotic  music  in  all  countries, 
etc.  He  read  the  Indian  epics.  He  must 
at  one  time  have  read  and  re-read  De 
Quincey,  but  that  writer  apparently  came 
to  stand  for  something  in  his  youth  which 
he  disliked,  and  by  1893  "  De  Quincey's 
charm  has  for  ever  vanished  " — Whittier's 
had  increased,  and  Hearn  was  persuaded  by 
him  to  a  sympathy  with  religious  emotions  : 
"It  is  like  hearing  a  great  congregation 
singing,  '  Nearer,  my  God,  to  thee.'  " 

It  is  evident  that  Hearn  began  with  the  - 
aim  of  saylng_s|range  things  in  an  .exquisite..- 
manner. ._  This  exquisite  manner  was  to  be 
jiunted  and  delved  foiv    That  it  did  not 
come  by  nature  may  be  seen  from  phrases 
like  "  The  liver  had  been  simply  roasted 
and  the  kidneys   fairly  fried,"  4  or  "  If   it 
be  agreeable  to  you  I  will  call  upon  you  at 
1    p.m.    on    Sunday   as    per   invitation."  6 
This  is  from  one  of  the  "  Letters  to  a  Lady," 

4  G.  M.  G.  5  L.  R.  128. 

39 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

written  when  he  was  twenty-five.  He  had 
then  "  not  visited  out  since  he  was  sixteen 

/  ...  had  led  a  very  hard  and  extra 
ordinary  life  previous  to  his  connexion  with 
the  press — became  a  species  of  clumsy 
barbarian — and  in  short  for  various  reasons 
considered  myself  ostracized,  tabooed,  out 
lawed."  6  -  This  was  to  explain  that  he 
was  not  used  to  /'  the  cultivated  class  of 
people  at  all.''  His  writing,  then,  was 
likely  to  be  founded  entirely  on  books,  and 

\  /he  would  revolt  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
influence  of  the  colloquial  language  to 
which  he  was  used.  Under  the  influence 
of  Gautier  and  his  "  perfection  of  melody, 
'warmth  of  word-colouring,  voluptuous  deli 
cacy,"  7  his  "  engraved  gem-work  of  words," 
this  became  certain.  In  most  of  his  letters 
-to  Mr.  Watkin  he  was  free  from  any  such 
influence,  but  used  only  the  words  and 
phrases  which  were  likely  to  come  readily  to 
his  pen  and  made  a  style  which  was  practi 
cally  written  speech,  and  slangy  speech. 
In  1882  he  begins  a  letter  with  :  "  Your 
letter  lies  before  me  here  like  a  white  tablet 

«  L.  R.  129.  7  B.  I.  269. 

40 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

of  stone  bearing  a  dead  name  ;  and  in  my 
mind  there  is  just  such  a  silence  as  one  feels 
standing  before  a  tomb — so  that  I  can  press 
your  hand  only  and  say  nothing."  This 
is  nothing  like  speech.^  He  was  then  writing 
for  the  Times-Democrat  of  New  Orleans 
translations  from  Maupassant,  Jules  Le- 
maitre,  Pierre  Loti,  Flaubert,  Hector  Malot, 
Camille  Flammarion,  Dostoievsky,  Sien- 
kiewicz,  Villiers  de  PIsle  Adam,  Matilde 
Serao,  Tolstoy,  Zola,  Maxime  du  Camp, 
Coppee,  Daudet,  Baudelaire,  and  writing 
articles  on  Loti,  on  Arabian  women,  on 
the  Roar  of  a  Great  City,  etc. :  he  allowed 
a  sentence  of  his  deliberate  style  to  enter  a 
letter.^  His  letters  to  Mr.  Krehbiel  had 
been  a  compromise  or  mixture  of  friendly 
speech  and  of  writing  elaborated  for 
the  benefit  of  a  public  in  whom  sympathy 
has  to  be  created.  It  is  a  very  attractive 
compromise,  as  in  the  description  of  his 
lodging  in  St.  Louis  Street,  an  old  Creole 
house.8 

Sometimes  he  is  not  ashamed  to  forget 
his  friend  and  imagine  a  public,  which  he 
harangues  about  "  that  religion  of  the 

s  B.  I.  173. 
41 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

wilderness  which  flies  to  solitude,  and  hath 
no  other  temple  than  the  vault  of  Heaven 
itself,  painted  with  the  frescoes  of  the 
clouds,  and  illuminated  by  the  trembling 
tapers  of  God's  everlasting  altar,  the  stars 
of  the  firmament,"  9  or  he  concludes  with  : 
"  So  I  draw  my  chair  closer  to  the  fire,  light 
up  my  pipe  de  terre  Gambiere,  and  in  the 
flickering  glow  weave  fancies  of  palm  trees 
and  ghostly  reefs  and  tepid  winds,  and  a 
Voice  from  the  far  tropics  calls  to  me  across 
the  darkness."  10  He  wrote  on  musical 
instruments,  on  luxury  and  art  in  the  time 
of  Elegabalus ;  he  held  it  to  be  his 
"  artistic  duty  "  to  let  himself  be  "  absorbed 
into  the  life  "  of  the  Latin  city,  to  "  study 
its  form  and  colour  and  passion."  There 
were,  he  said  in  1882,  months  when  he  could 
not  write  ;  when  he  could  it  was  to  "  write 
a  rough  sketch  and  labour  it  over  and  over 
again  for  half  a  year,  at  intervals  of  ten 
minutes'  leisure — sometimes  I  get  a  day 
or  two."  n  He  foretold  that  he  would 
always  be  "  more  or  less  Arabesque — cover 
ing  his  whole  edifice  with  intricate  designs, 

s  B.  I.  191.         10  B.  I.  267.         ll  B.  I.  239. 
42 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

seriating  his  arches,  and  engraving  mysti 
cisms  above  the  portals." 

It  was  in  1882  that  he  published,  in  a  book 
which  took  its  title  from  the  first  story, 
translations  of  Gautier's  One  of  Cleopatra's 
Nights,  Clarimonde,  Arria  Marcella,  The 
Mummifs  Foot,  Omphale,  and  King  Can- 
daules.  Three  of  these,  he  said,  "  rank 
among  the  most  remarkable  literary  pro 
ductions  of  the  century."  He  wrote  a 
warm-hearted  dedication  "  to  the  lovers  of 
the  loveliness  of  the  antique  world,  the 
lovers  of  physical  beauty  and  artistic  truth, 
of  the  charm  of  youthful  dreams  and  young 
passion  in  its  blossoming,  of  poetic  ambi 
tions  and  the  sweet  pantheism  that  finds 
all  Nature  vitalized  by  the  spirit  of  the 
beautiful."  A  better  translation  is  not 
likely  to  be  made,  because  a  man  capable 
of  doing  it  better  would  probably  leave  it 
alone  and  do  original  work.  To  those 
who  already  know  the  stories  the  transla 
tions  are  interesting  as  Hearn's  early  prose, 
a  cumbrous  English  stiffened  with  beauties 
which  do  not  make  it  beautiful.  It  is  un 
wieldy  but  not  massive,  hard  without  being 
firm,  and  it  is  not  alive.  It  is  not  Gautier 
43 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

and  not  Hearn,  yet  the  more  imposing  parts 
of  it  became  parts  of  Hearn,  and  he  was  to 
write  many  a  sentence  like  :  "  She  wore  a 
robe  of  orange-red  velvet,  and  from  her 
wide  ermine-lined  sleeves  there  peeped  forth 
patrician  hands  of  infinite  delicacy,  and  so 
ideally  transparent  that,  like  the  fingers  of 
Aurora,  they  permitted  the  sun  to  shine 
through  them."  12  His  next  book,  the 
Stray  Leaves  from  Strange  Literatures  of 
1884,  consisted  of  stories  which  were  "  re 
constructions  of  what  impressed  me  as  most 
fantastically  beautiful  in  the  most  exotic 
literature  which  I  was  able  to  obtain," 
from  the  East  and  the  West,  but  chiefly 
from  the  East.  In  the  next  year  he  pub 
lished  Ghombo  Zhebes,  a  "  Dictionary  of 
Creole  proverbs,  selected  from  six  Creole 
dialects,  translated  into  French  and  Eng 
lish  with  notes,  complete  index  to  subjects 
and  some  brief  remarks  upon  the  Creole 
idioms  of  Louisiana." 

In  1887  came  Some  Chinese  Ghosts. 
Hearn  calls  them  black  lilies  or  phosphoric 
roses,  and  chose  them  for  their  "  weird 
beauty."  In  several  cases  ten  lines  of  an 

!2  C.  N.  88. 
44 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

old  unadorned  legend  was  the  origin  of  a 
tale  of  twenty  pages.  The  Chinese  outline 
was  probably  in  every  case  a  remarkable 
one,  and  such  it  is  in  Hearn.  "  The  story 
of  Ming-Y,"  for  example,  is  of  an  immortal 
beauty.  It  is  of  a  young  tutor  who  met  a 
beautiful  woman  in  the  woods  and  loved 
her  and  used  to  visit  her  beautiful  palace 
instead  of  going  home  as  he  pretended.  At 
last  he  was  forced  to  confess.  He  showed 
his  elders  some  of  the  gifts  of  his  mistress 
and  told  them  of  her  palace.  The  gifts 
seemed  to  have  "  lain  buried  in  the  earth  for 
centuries  "  :  as  to  the  palace,  there  was  no 
house  in  the  place  which  he  described,  and 
the  woman  was  unknown  to  them.  They 
went  to  see  and  found  only  a  tomb.  Then 
they  remembered  the  famous  courtesan  who 
was  buried  there  long  ago,  and  the  city  of 
her  poet  lover  who  gave  her  the  gifts  which 
she  had  given  to  the  young  man,  and  were 
all  that  he  ever  again  saw  of  her,  the  lion 
of  yellow  jade,  the  brush  case  of  carven 
agate,  and  the  music.  These  stories  are 
good  enough  to  keep  alive  the  book  which 
contains  them.  But  they  are  experiments, 
not  master's  work.  Each  story  cost 
45 


LAFCADIO    HEARN 

"  months  of  hard  work  and  study,"  as  he 
has  told  us,  and  it  can  be  believed  ;  for  he 
adopted  a  style  for  them  which  had  to  be 
deliberately  maintained.  The  style  appar 
ently  did  not  grow  out  of  his  speech  or  his 
letters,  but  was  a  loftier  ceremonious  me 
dium  which  became  a  second  or  a  third 
nature.  It  cannot  be  analysed  here  suffi 
ciently.  But  a  few  isolated  points  should 
be  noticed  and  considered.  Thus  on  page 
31  he  speaks  of  "  savage  flowers,"  where  he 
means  "  wild  flowers  "  ;  but  "  wild  "  was 
too  familiar  and  he  did  not  see,  in  his  unreal 
tower  of  composition,  that  "  savage  "  was 
a  mere  synonym  and  an  unsuitable  one. 
So  on  page  65  he  calls  the  autumn  light 
"  aureate  "  for  no  better  reason.  In  every 
story  description  abounds,  and  it  is  of  such 
a  kind  that  the  words  call  attention  to 
themselves,  and  are  possibly  admired,  but 
ultimately  fail  to  produce  any  effect  beyond 
themselves.  For  example,  in  "  the  great 
citron-light  of  the  sunset  faded  out,"  either 
the  mind  will  think  only  of  citrons,  or  it 
will  painfully  discover  for  itself  a  resem 
blance  between  one  of  the  sunset  colours 
and  the  colour  of  a  citron,  leaving  the  words 
46 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

of  the  writer  a  merely  accurate  statement 
incapable  of  producing  a  pure  impression 
related  to  its  context.  This  is  far  too  often 
the  reader's  fortune.  When  he  reads  about 
an  ear  and  a  cheek  in  this  style  :  "  0  the  jewel 
in  her  ear  !  What  lotus  bud  more  dainty 
than  the  folded  flower  of  flesh,  with  its 
dripping  of  diamond  fire  !  Again  he  saw 
it,  and  the  curve  of  the  cheek  beyond, 
luscious  to  look  upon  as  beautiful  brown 
fruit,"  13  he  finds  it  hard  to  think  of  human 
beauty,  so  confused  is  he  by  words  and  by 
flowers  and  fruit.  The  utmost  reward  of 
such  writing  is  an  admiration  near  akin  to 
fatigue,  and  more  often  we  feel  that  the 
writer  has  forgotten  the  woman  and  lost 
any  possible  power  to  suggest  her  by  the 
time  he  has  decided  upon  the  sentence  : 
"  All  suddenly  he  felt  glide  about  his  neck 
the  tepid  smoothness  of  a  woman's  arm." 
Such  writing  fails  because  it  is  dictated  by 
an  ideal  that  is  not  deep  enough  in  the 
writer's  spirit,  the  ideal  of  "  one  thing,  one 
word  " — one  word  chosen  deliberately  as  if  it 
were  dead  and  still  and  powerless  to  re 
taliate  and  live  alone.  Much  of  Hearn's 

"  a  O.  122. 

47 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

care  must  have  gone  to  make  the  eloquence 
of  his  opening  and  closing  sentences,  like  : 
"  Thrice  had  spring  perfumed  the  breast 
of  the  land  with  flowers,  and  thrice  had 
been  celebrated  that  festival  of  the  dead 
which  is  called  Siu-fan-ti,  and  thrice  had 
Tong  swept  and  garnished  his  father's  tomb 
and  presented  his  five-fold  offerings  of  fruits 
and  meats."  14  The  pity  of  it  is  that  such 
eloquence  rarely  has  any  natural  sweet 
cadence,  and  Hearn's  has  not.  When  he 
wrote  a  letter  about  something  he  cared  for 
and  understood,  his  words  had  a  flow  which 
was  inseparable  from  their  sense  ;  but  in 
this  entirely  self-conscious  writing  the  spirit 
is  never  free  to  make  music,  or  if  one  good 
cadence  emerges  the  next  will  clash  with 
it.  Where  this  curious  writing  is  most 
successful  is  in  catalogues,  such  as  this 
from  the  "  Tale  of  the  Porcelain  God "  : 
"  The  vases  with  orifices  belled  like  the  cups 
of  flowers,  or  cleft  like  the  bills  of  birds, 
or  fanged  like  the  jaws  of  serpents,  or 
pink-lipped  as  the  mouth  of  a  girl ;  the 
vases  flesh-coloured  and  purple-veined  and 
dimpled,  with  ears  and  with  ear-rings  ;  the 

14  C.  O.  81, 

48 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

vases  in  likeness  of  mushrooms,  of  lotus- 
flowers,  of  lizards,  of  horse-footed  dragons 
woman-faced ;  the  vases  strangely  trans- 
lucid,  that  simulate  the  white  glimmering 
of  grains  of  prepared  rice,  that  counterfeit 
the  vapory  lace-work  of  frost,  that  imitate 
the  efflorescences  of  coral."  15  Life  is  not 
expected  in  a  catalogue ;  connexion  is 
unnecessary ;  and  blind  attention  to  iso 
lated  detail  can  work  no  harm.  Hearn 
knew  this  :  his  books  are  full  of  such  cata 
logues  and  they  were  sometimes  useful 
receptacles  for  the  products  of  his  games  of 
skill  with  words. 

The  effect  of  Chinese  Ghosts  is  therefore 
a  mixed  one  :  the  story  and  the  treatment 
are  always  separable.  Hearn's  contribu 
tion  is  decoration.  He  overlays  the  simple 
and  beautiful  outline  though  without  con 
cealing  it.  According  to  the  reader's  power 
of  enjoying  words  that  are  without  a  spirit 
will  be  his  enjoyment  of  the  tales  as  a  whole. 
He  will  be  continually  in  the  neighbour 
hood  of  the  spirit  of  beauty,  as  in  "  The 
Story  of  Ming-Y,"  but  he  will  be  aware  that 
Hearn  who  found  the  beauty  also  caged  it, 

16  C.  O.  153. 

49  D 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

with  words  pretending  to  be  equivalent  to 
things  as  well  as  more  than  names. 

Two  long  stories  followed  in  1889  and 
1890,  Chita  and  Youma.  They  belong  to 
the  same  period  of  his  art  as  Chinese  Ghosts. 
They  are  beautiful  stories  full  of  beautiful 
elements,  but  the  treatment  is  the  conspicu 
ous  thing.  There  is  the  story  and  there  is  the 
eloquent  description  of  tropical  nature,  not 
exactly  separable  but  not  perfectly  united 
by  the  mind  which  loved  them  both. 
Chita,  for  example,  contains  much  mere 
eyesight  and  un vitalized  notes  of  descrip 
tion,  sometimes  in  the  favourite  form  of  a 
catalogue.  The  writing  tends  constantly 
towards  a  superhuman  level  of  eloquence, 
such  as  may  be  indicated  by  the  passage  : 
"  But  she  saw  and  heard  and  felt  much  of 
that  which,  though  old  as  the  heavens  and 
the  earth,  is  yet  eternally  new  and  eternally 
young  with  the  holiness  of  beauty — eter 
nally  mystical  and  divine — eternally  weird  : 
the  unveiled  magnificence  of  Nature's 
moods — the  perpetual  poem  hymned  by 
wind  and  surge — the  everlasting  splendour 
of  the  sky."  16  It  is  relevant  to  ask  why 

16  C.  148-9. 
50 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

he  should  have  dragged  the  girl  Chita  into 
such  description  of  what  he  admired  in 
nature.  But  even  when  he  has  not  the 
excuse  of  writing  about  Nature  in  her 
augustness,  he  makes  the  same  ceremonious 
approach  to  his  subject,  as  in  "  the  pro 
gressively  augmenting-weariness  of  lessons 
in  deportmenjtflri  dancing,  in  music,  in  the 
impossible^  art  of  keeping  her  dresses  un 
ruffled  and  unsoiled."  He  translates  "  On 
with  the  dance "  into  "  Better  to  s^ek 
solace  in  choregraphic  harmonies,  in  the 
rhythm  of  gracious  motion  and  of  perfect 
melody."17  Much  of  the  description  of 
beamtiful  things  is  nearly  as  good  as  possible 
of  i$3  kind,  and  the  rhapsodies  are  likely  to 
interest  and  charm  students  of  the  elQ- 
quen^j  of  Browne,  De  Quincey  or  Ruskin. 
But  itssgower  is  halved  because  the  writer 
has  not  chosen  the  right  opportunity  for 
such  exercise^  and  exercises  they  remain, 
instead  of  esseritiaA  elements  in  a  work  of 
art.  The  book  is  not  without  humanity, 
but  the  attitude  towards  human  things,  the 
most  tragic  and  the  most  simple,  is  usually 
spectatorial  He  describes,  for  example, 

»  C. 

51 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

the  jetsam  of  a  storm  which  destroyed  an 
island  and  all  its  holiday  population  :  the 
sheep,  casks,  billiard  tables,  pianos,  chil 
dren's  toys,  clothes,  and  dead  bodies.  The 
impression  given  by  the  passage  is  that 
Hearn  had  never  got  beyond  the  point  of 
view  that  this  scene  was  a  good  subject  for 
description.  He  was  writing  as  a  detached 
aesthetic  artist  and  this  cold  figure  is  as  con 
spicuous  as  the  storm  and  its  havoc.  In 
a  different  key  is  the  description  of  yellow 
fever  which  ends  the  book.  Hearn  himself 
had  nearly  died  of  the  disease  in  New 
Orleans  :  in  Chita  it  kills  a  man  but  it 
gives  some  life  to  the  style,  because  the 
author  is  writing  of  what  he  knows  and  has 
mastered  too  well  to  regard  it  as  a  subject 
for  decoration,  or  for  felicities  like  "  the 
stridulous  telegraphy  of  crickets,"  and  "a 
soporific  murmur  made  of  leaf-speech  and 
the  hum  of  gnats."  The  whole  book  was 
the  work  of  twelve  months,  and  he  calls  it 
himself  a  "  philosophic  romance  " 18  meant 
to  reach  "  that  something  in  the  reader 
which  they  call  Soul,  God,  or  the  Unknow 
able,  according  as  the  thought  harmonizes 

"  B.  I.  405. 
52 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

with  Christian,  Pantheistic,  or  Spencerian 
ideas   without   conflicting   with   any." 

His  descriptive  skill  and  enthusiasm 
found  a  perfect  outlet  in  his  Two  Years  in 
the  French  West  Indies  of  1890.  Here  it 
was  his  business  to  describe  what  he  saw. 
The  book  contains  pictures  of  Nature  and 
of  negro  and  creole  life  in  Martinique,  and 
stories.  Of  the  long  "  Midsummer  Trip 
to  the  Tropics  "  he  says  that  "  in  spite  of 
sundry  justifiable  departures  from  simple 
note-making,  this  paper  is  offered  only  as  an 
effort  to  record  the  visual  and  emotional 
impressions  of  the  moment."  Sometimes 
he  gives  mere  notes  like  :  "  Sixth  day  out. 
Wind  tepid  and  still  stronger,  but  sky  very 
clear.  An  indigo  sea,  with  beautiful  white- 
caps.  The  ocean  colour  is  deepening ;  it 
is  very  rich  now,  but  I  think  less  wonderful 
than  before  ; — it  is  an  opulent  pansy  hue 
Close  by  the  ship  it  looks  black-blue — the 
colour  that  bewitches~~in  certain  Celtic 
eyes."  19  At  other  times  he  finishes  a  little 
picture  in  two  sentences  like :  "  The 
steamer's  wake  is  a  great  broad,  seething 
river  of  fire — white  like  strong  moonshine  : 

19  F.  W.  I. 
63 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

the  glow  is  bright  enough  to  read  by.  At 
its  centre  the  trail  is  brightest ;  towards 
either  edge  it  pales  off  cloudily,  curling  like 
smoke  of  phosphorus."  2°  The  method  is 
admirably  suited  to  travel  sketches  written 
on  the  spot  for  a  magazine.  In  the  stories 
he  still  gives  too  much  space  to  description, 
but  "  Ti  Canotie,"  for  example,  is  not 
spoilt  by  a  too  exalted  manner.  He  is 
lively  and  intelligent  in  his  account  of  the 
character  of  the  coloured  woman  and  its 
development  through  generations  of  prosti 
tution.  He  is  best  of  all  in  expressing  the 
charm  of  Nature  and  the  people,  the  love 
liness  and  the  languor  ending  in  dread  of 
activity  and  weakening  of  memory.  "  Pa 
combine,  che  !  "  ("  Do  not  think,  dear  !  ") 
is  the  warning  of  a  coloured  girl  to  a  con 
valescent  European  in  one  of  the  stories, 
and  it  ends  : 

"  She  slipped  an  arm  about  his  neck. 

"  *  Doudoux,'  she  persisted — and  her  voice 
was  a  dove's  coo — '  Si  ou  ainmein  moin, 
pa  combine, — non  ! ' 

"  And  in  her  strange  exotic  beauty,  her 
savage  grace,  her  supple  caress,  the  velvet 

20  F.  W.  1. 
54 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

witchery  of  her  eyes — it  seemed  to  me  that 
I  beheld  a  something  imaged,  not  of  herself, 
not  of  the  moment  only — a  something 
weirdly  sensuous ;  the  spirit  of  tropic 
Nature  made  golden  flesh,  and  murmuring 
to  each  lured  wanderer  :  '  If  thou  wouldst 
love  me,  do  not  think  ! '  " 21 

Hearn  himself  did  not  weary  "  of 
watching  this  picturesque  life — of  studying 
the  costumes,  brilliant  with  butterfly 
colours — and  the  statuesque  semi-nudity  of 
labouring  hundreds — and  the  untaught  grace 
of  attitudes — and  the  simplicity  of  manners." 
The  necessity  of  writing  more  rapidly  than 
usual  gave  a  fluency  which  was  beneficial  to 
his  exuberant  picturesqueness,  in  spite  of 
the  use  of  "  minuscule  "  as  a  synonym  for 
"  very  small  "  and  the  inversion  of  "  changes 
extraordinary,"  and  similar  signs  of  care. 

Just  before  going  to  Japan,  and  "  in  sore 
distress  for  money,"  he  wrote  his  translation 
of  Le  Crime  de  Sylvestre  Bonnard  in  a  few 
weeks.  Everything  in  his  first  day  in 
Japan  was  "  unspeakably  pleasurable  and 
new,"  and  he  was  not  offended  by  the 
"  shop  of  American  sewing-machines  next 

21  F.  W.  1. 
55 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

to  the  shop  of  a  Buddhist  image  maker  " 
in  Yokohama.  His  eyes  were  delighted, 
his  mind  at  ease :  asked  by  a  temple 
attendant  if  he  was  a  Christian  he  said  : 
"  No,"  and  to  "  Are  you  a  Buddhist  ?  " 
replied  "Not  exactly."22  He  was  at  the 
school  in  Matsue — Matsue,  the  "  chief  city 
of  the  province  of  the"T?ods  " — in  August, 
1890,  after  a  period  of  "  living  in  temples 
and  old  Buddhist  cemeteries,  making  pil 
grimages  and  sounding  enormous  bells 
and  worshipping  astounding  Buddhas," 23 
and  making  the  acquaintance  of  Professor 
Basil  Hall  Chamberlain,  author  of  Things 
Japanese.  He  began  writing  at  once, 
recording  his  "  First  Day  in  the  Orient," 
contributing  essays  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
in  1891  and  onwards,  and  publishing  his 
first  Japanese  book,  Glimpses  of  Unfamiliar 
Japan,  in  1894. 

The  change  of  life  was  like  "  escaping 
from  an  almost  unbearable  atmospheric 
pressure  into  a  rarefied,  highly  oxygenated 
medium."  24  He  found  it  partly  a  gain  that 
"  in  Japan  the  law  of  life  is  not  as  with  us 
— that  each  one  strives  to  expand  his  own 

13  B.  H.  6.  24  B.  I.  35. 

56 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

individuality  at  the  expense  of  his  neigh 
bour's  "  ;  but  partly  a  loss,  because  there 
was  "  never  a  fine  inspiration,  .  .  .  never 
a  thrill."  Therefore,  he  said,  literary 
work  was  "  dry,  bony,  hard,  dead  work." 25 
It  is  more  likely  that  his  discomfort  was 
due  to  the  inevitable  straining  effort  to 
come  rapidly  to  terms  with  a  life  so  different 
in  detail  and  in  the  whole.  He  came  to 
doubt  whether  the  development  of  the 
individuality  in  a  community  was  a  "  lofty 
or  desirable " 26  tendency,  but  also  to 
suspect  that  that  "  depth  does  not  exist  in 
the  Japanese  soulstream."  He  felt  that 
he  would  "  never  get  close  to  the  men." 
He  discovered  "  how  utterly  dead  Old 
Japan  is,  and  how  ugly  New  Japan  is 
becoming." 27 

Glimpses  of  Unfamiliar  Japan  consists 
chiefly  of  descriptions  of  visible  things- 
people,  customs,  dresses,  gardens,  shrines, 
and  gods,  seen  at  home  or  on  travel. 
There  are  also  stories  outlined  or  elaborated, 
and  essays  like  those  on  lovers'  suicides, 
and  the  Japanese  smile,  and  extracts  direct 
from  his  diary  as  a  teacher.  His  "  un- 

25  B.  I.  35.         28  B.  I.  40.         »7  B.  II  223. 
57 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

familiar  "  Japan  was  that  of  the  mass  not 
yet  Europeanized,  "  the  great  common 
people,  who  represent  in  Japan,  as  in  all 
countries,  the  national  virtues,  and  who 
still  cling  to  their  delightful  old  customs, 
their  picturesque  dresses,  their  Buddhist 
images,  their  household  shrines,  their  beau 
tiful  and  touching  worship  of  ancestors."28 
His  sympathy  was  extreme.  He  was  one 
who  not  merely  felt  "  the  divine  in  all 
religions," 29  but  thought  Christianity  far 
more  irrational  than  Buddhism.  He  saw 
in  a  figure  of  the  god  Jizo  a  dream  "  more 
sweet  than  any  imaged  Christ,"  as  well  as 
a  work  of  art  so  charming  that  he  felt  "  a 
pain  at  being  obliged  to  pass  it  by,"  that 
"playfellow  of  dead  children."30  When 
a  missionary  had  told  one  of  Hearn's  pupils 
that  the  Japanese  were  savages,  he  an 
swered  :  "I  think,  my  dear  lad,  that  he 
himself  was  a  savage — a  vulgar,  ignorant, 
savage  bigot.  I  think  it  is  your  highest 
social  duty  to  honour  your  Emperor.  .  .  . 
I  think  it  is  your  duty  to  respect  the  gods 
of  your  fathers,  the  religion  of  your  coun 
try — even  if  you  yourself  cannot  believe  all 

28  G.  viii.  2t  O.  v.  30  G.  48. 

58 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

that  others  believe."  If  the  multitude  and 
strangeness  of  things  at  times  confused  his 
sense  of  form,  they  had  also  touched  his 
gravity  as  well  as  his  curiosity,  so  that  the 
book  is  incomparably  richer  than  its  pre 
decessors.  He  had  now  to  write  to  give 
information  and  this  checked  his  eloquence. 
He  had  little  room  for  rhapsody,  even  if  he 
had  felt  sufficiently  at  ease  for  it,  though 
he  was  like  his  native  neighbours  in  at 
least  one  characteristic  :  that  they  "  make 
pilgrimages  not  more  for  the  sake  of  pleasing 
the  gods  than  of  pleasing  themselves  by 
the  sight  of  rare  and  pretty  things."  He 
travelled  to  Oki,  where  not  even  a  mis 
sionary  had  been.  The  light  of  Japan,  as 
"  gentle  as  the  light  of  dreams,"  and  "  the 
all-temperate  world"  of  men  and  Nature, 
sobered  him  after  the  garish  tropics.  He 
tells  us  that  he  came  "  to  understand  the 
unspeakable  loveliness  of  a  solitary  spray 
of  blossoms  arranged  as  only  a  Japanese 
expert  knows  how  to  arrange  it," 31  and 
to  admire  it  far  above  that  "  vulgar  mur 
dering  of  flowers,"  the  Western  bouquet. 

31  G.  345. 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

"  Gentler  and  kindlier  faces "  he  never 
saw  than  among  the  people  who  bowed  in 
apology  even  while  gazing  at  the  foreigner. 
In  his  own  writing  moderation,  gentle 
ness  and  kindliness  are  certainly  more 
noticeable  than  before.  Descriptions  of 
new  things,  by  a  man  who  had  probably  to 
use  everything  that  he  saw  and  could  not 
afford  to  pick  and  choose,  could  hardly  be 
better  done.  There  are  still  catalogues, 
but  used  with  a  purpose,  not  merely  to  give 
an  excuse  for  artfully  enumerating  precious 
or  strange  objects.  He  can  be  dull — how 
could  he  not  be  at  such  a  task  ?  Yet 
aiming  as  he  does  at  fulness  and  accuracy, 
not  at  impressions  and  finished  pictures, 
he  not  only  charms  us  by  bringing  charming 
things  before  us,  but  by  his  own  modesty 
and  grace.  There  are  some  wildernesses 
of  adjectives  ;  there  is  a  page  where  he 
uses  "  dwarf,"  "  miniature,"  "  microscopic," 
"  tiny  "  and  "  lilliputian  "  in  turn  ;  there 
are  some  pomposities  like  "  solemn,  pro 
found,  mighty,"  "  colossal,  severe,  superb  "  ; 
and  there  is  the  phrase  "  mesmeric  lentor." 
There  are  also  a  thousand  tender,  lovely, 
or  grim  things  described  in  such  a  way 
60 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

that  the  reader  feels  himself  to  have  been 
all   but   naturalized. 

In  Out  of  the  East,  which  followed  in 
1895,  the  disturbance  of  initiation  had 
ceased,  and  the  first  delight.  There  is  very 
little  description  and  less  rhapsody.  Hearn 
thinks  more  and  uses  the  note  book  less. 
He  is  observing  principles  and  tendencies, 
beginning  to  generalize  and  compare.  The 
sub- title  of  the  book  is  :  "  Reveries  and 
Studies  in  New  Japan."  The  "beautiful 
illusion  "  of  Japan  had  faded  out  in  five 
years  and  he  "  had  learned  to  see  the  Far 
East  without  its  glamour," 32  but  with  no 
loss  of  admiration.  He  had  seen  Japan 
holding  her  own  against  the  world  in  the 
war  with  China,  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
nation  concentrated  and  silent ;  and  he 
had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  day  of 
Western  influence  was  over.  Whatever 
"  the  limitations  of  personal  individuality 
among  the  Japanese,"  it  is  his  belief  that  "  as 
a  nation  Japan  possesses  an  individuality 
much  stronger  than  our  own."  He  tells 
the  story  of  the  girl  Yuko  who  offered  up 
her  life  that  the  sorrow  of  the  Emperor 

82  O.  325. 
61 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

might  cease,  on  the  occasion  of  the  attack 
on  the  Czarevitch.  She  cut  her  throat 
after  binding  her  girdle  tightly  above  her 
knees,  because  "  the  daughter  of  a  Samurai 
must  be  found  in  death  with  limbs  decently 
composed  "  ;  and  the  Ministers  whispered  : 
"  All  else  will  change  ;  but  the  heart  of 
the  nation  will  not  change."33  What  he 
calls  "  the  vague  but  immeasurable  emotion 
of  Shinto "  has  grasped  him,  and  he 
embodies  it  in  the  character  of  one  of  his 
pupils  departing  for  the  war,  who  told  him 
of  a  military  excursion  in  his  last  year  at 
school :  "  We  marched  to  a  shrine  in  the 
district  of  lu,  where  the  spirits  of  heroes 
are  worshipped.  It  is  a  beautiful  lonesome 
place,  among  hills ;  and  the  temple  is 
shadowed  by  very  high  trees.  It  is  always 
dim  and  cool  and  silent  there.  We  drew 
up  before  the  shrine  in  military  order ; 
nobody  spoke.  Then  the  bugle  sounded 
through  the  holy  grove,  like  a  call  to 
battle  ;  and  we  all  presented  arms  ;  and  the 
tears  came  to  my  eyes — I  do  not  know 
why."  34 .  .  .  He  concluded  that  only  half- 
education  could  tempt  this  people  to 

83  0.  341.        3*  O.  298. 
62 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

"  servile  imitation  of  Western  ways."  He 
made  some  slips,  as  when  he  said  that  the 
typical  woman  in  Japanese  romance  never 
appears  as  "  a  sentimental  maiden,  dying, 
or  making  others  die,  for  love  "  ; 35  a  slip 
which  he  corrected  by  several  stories  in 
later  books.  But  as  a  rule  he  spoke  with 
great  accuracy  and  weight.  He  showed 
that  the  religion,  the  morality,  and  the  art 
of  the  Japanese  were  "  evolved  out  of 
ancestral  habits,  customs,  ethics,  beliefs, 
directly  the  opposite  of  our  own  in  some 
cases,  and  in  all  cases  strangely  different," 
and  not  to  be  molested  without  damage  to 
one  party  or  to  both.  He  went  farther, 
and  in  the  matter  of  art,  for  example, 
expressed  the  opinion  that  the  Japanese 
art  would,  in  an  appreciative  and  un 
prejudiced  mind,  modify  "  almost  every 
pre-existing  sentiment  in  relation  to  the 
beautiful."  After  school  hours  he  used  to 
go  up  into  an  old  village  cemetery  and  look 
at  the  stone  Buddha  smiling  "  the  smile 
of  one  who  has  received  an  injury  not  to  be 
resented,"36  and  the  contrast  between  this 
and  the  utilitarian  modern  college  below 

M  O.  92.  »«  O.  68, 

63 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

set  up  a  dialogue  in  his  mind  between  East 
and  West.  Science  speaks  for  the  West 
of  the  Cosmos,  resolved  into  a  nebula, 
recondensing  to  form  another  swarm  of 
worlds  on  which  reappears  the  same  pea 
sant  and  his  ox  and  plough  as  before. 
Buddhism  replies  that  this  same  peasant 
in  Japan  knows  and  has  long  known  what 
the  East  has  "  mathematically  discovered," 
and  has  been  taught  something  of  his 
"  innumerable  faiths,  and  of  the  apparition 
and  disparition  of  universes  and  of  the 
unity  of  life." 37  The  West  speaks  of  the  per 
petual  record  of  "  the  least  of  human 
thoughts."  The  East  knows  more,  and 
the  man  has  been  taught  "  that  the  thoughts 
and  acts  of  each  being  projected  beyond  the 
individual  existence,  shape  other  lives 
unborn,"  and, taught  "to  control  his  most 
secret  wishes,[because  of  their  immeasurable 
inherent  potentialities  "  ;  and  Hearn  tells 
a  story  of  a  dead  woman  who  haunted  a 
place  and  was  blamed,  even  by  those  who 
pitied  her,  because  "  she  should  have 
known  that  anger,  secretly  indulged,  can 
have  ghostly  consequences."38  Having 

«7  0.  168.        38  0.  176, 
64 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

spoken  of  his  own  conclusion  that  "  we 
have  no  possible  refuge  but  in  ourselves," 
he  quotes  the  revelation  of  Buddha  :  "Be 
ye  lamps  unto  yourselves  ;  be  ye  a  refuge 
unto  yourselves.  .  .  .  Look  not  for  refuge 
to  any  beside  yourselves."  39 

Kokoro  belongs  to  1896,  and  is  of  the 
same  substance  as  Out  of  the  East.  Shinto- 
ism  and  the  religious  emotion  which  is  one 
with  patriotism  and  family  piety  fasci 
nate  him.  He  compares  with  the  Western 
man,  insensible  to  the  past,  the  Japanese 
uttering  the  Shinto  prayer :  "  Ye  fore 
fathers  of  the  generations,  and  of  our  fami 
lies,  and  of  our  kindred — unto  you,  the 
founders  of  our  houses,  we  utter  the  glad 
ness  of  our  thanks."  But  it  must  be  re 
membered  that  Hearn  knew  far  more  about 
the  domestic  life  of  Japan  than  of  England 
or  the  United  States.  His  comparisons 
are  sometimes  rash  and  seldom  necessary  : 
his  fine  expressions  of  Japanese  ideals  and 
realities  are  effective  without  comparisons. 
In  "  Japanese  Civilization  "  he  dwells  upon 
the  lightness  and  mobility  of  Japanese  life, 
the  impermanence  of  things,  the  lack  of 
39  O.  181, 

65  E 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

encumbrances  and  of  "  egotistical  indi 
vidualism."  Shinto  has  taught  the  indi 
vidual  to  think  of  Emperor  and  country 
before  family  and  self :  Buddhism,  "  to 
master  regret,  to  endure  pain,  and  to  accept 
as  eternal  law  the  vanishing  of  things  loved 
and  the  tyranny  of  things  hated."  40  He 
tells  how  he  saw  by  accident  the  relaxed 
face  of  a  male  servant  who  had  long  seemed 
happy :  "  Hard  lines  of  pain  and  anger 
appeared  in  it,  making  it  some  twenty  years 
older  "  ;  but  at  a  warning  cough  the  man 
was  rejuvenated.  It  is  no  wonder  that  in 
"  A  Glimpse  of  Tendencies  "  he  declares  that 
the  barriers  between  East  and  West  "  of 
racial  feeling,  of  emotional  differentiation, 
of  language,  of  manners  and  beliefs,  are 
likely  to  remain  unsurmountable  for  cen 
turies."  Nevertheless,  he  imagines  an 
approaching  of  East  and  West,  producing 
a  Western  religion  which  should  combine 
synthetic  philosophy  and  Buddhism,  and 
"  differing  from  Buddhism  mainly  in  the 
greater  exactness  of  its  conceptions  "  : 41 
and  again  :  "  A  Buddhism  strongly  fortified 
by  Western  science  will  meet  the  future  needs 

40  K.  36.  41  K.  244. 

66 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

of  the  race."  42  He,  at  least,  like  Maeterlinck, 
does  not  dread  the  disintegration  of  the 
Ego  after  death  on  which  Buddhism  and 
science  insist :  "  Rather  than  an  end  to  be 
feared,"  he  says,  "the  dissolution  of  self 
is  the  one  object  of  all  objects  to  which 
our  efforts  should  be  turned."  He  repeats 
that  "  the  soft  serenity  "  and  "  passionless 
tenderness  "  43  of  the  face  of  Buddha  might 
yet  give  peace  of  soul  to  the  West.  The 
Shinto  idea  that  "  the  world  of  the  living  is 
directly  governed  by  the  world  of  the 
dead " 44  was  beginning  to  haunt  him. 
Spencer  had  helped  him  to  it,  as  may  be 
seen  in  "  From  a  Travelling  Diary,"45  where 
he  quotes  from  Spencer  that  first  love  is 
"  absolutely  antecedent  to  all  relative  ex 
perience."  It  was  to  become  a  literary 
obsession  to  Hearn,  if  not  what  it  was  to 
the  Japanese  with  whom  "  the  constant 
presence  of  the  dead  has  been  a  matter  of 
conviction  for  thousands  of  years."  This 
book  is  not  all  philosophical,  though  it  is 
more  so  than  Out  of  the  East.  Even  the 
stories  in  it  are  directly  useful  as  illustra- 

42  K.  193. 

43  K.  221.  "  K.  268.  «  K.  59. 

67 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

tions  of  Japanese  ideas.  Such  is  the  story 
of  a  boy  of  seven  who  saved  his  father  from 
a  tyrant  by  showing  a  severed  head  which 
he  pretended  to  be  his  father's,  and  after 
saluting  it  reverently,  cut  out  his  own 
bowels  in  grief  to  make  the  deception  com 
plete.  There  is  no  longer  much  question 
of  style.  He  writes  with  lucidity,  preci 
sion  and  flow,  now  and  then  returning  to 
his  old  ways  and  writing :  "  These  things 
make  appeal  extraordinary  to  emotional 
life,"  or  "  there  is  a  cavernous  world  tre 
mendous"  48  or  "a  limpid  magnificence  of 
light  indescribable."  These  were  temporary 
indulgences  of  a  sober  man  who  was  too 
busy  to  try  to  write  better  than  he  was  born 
to  do.  This  mature  style  was  not  one 
which  he  would  have  been  proud  of  ten 
years  before,  for  it  owed  much  of  its  indi 
viduality  to  these  occasional  slips  ;  but  it 
was  sufficient  and  without  pretension. 

Gleanings  from  Buddha  Fields,  published 
in  1897  but  written  before  he  came  to 
Tokyo,  is  continued  from  its  two  prede 
cessors.  He  returns  in  "  Nirvana  "  to  his 
opinion  that  because  Buddhism  in  many 

46  K.  16  n. 
68 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

ways  appeals  to  Western  reason  it  offers  us 
"  larger  religious  possibilities — the  sugges 
tions  of  a  universal  scientific  creed  nobler 
than  any  which  has  ever  existed,"  47  Light, he 
says,  is  "  offered  from  the  East."  Jn  "  Notes 
of  a  Trip  to  Kyoto,"  however,  he  finds 
one  source  of  "  the  contentment  and  simple 
happiness  of  Japanese  common  life "  in 
the  cheapness  of  pleasure,  "  creating 
the  beautiful  out  of  nothing," 48  really 
enjoying  landscapes  and  the  sight  of  ani 
mals,  insects,  and  flowers  :  in  the  essay 
44  In  Osaka  "  he  finds  another  reason  for  it 
in  the  Japanese  44  birthright "  of  taste. 
His  chief  business  is  still  with  description 
and  exposition  of  what  he  has  learnt  about 
Japanese  life,  art,  and  religion,  in  essays  on 
the  city  of  Osaka,  on  4C  Buddhist  Allusions  in 
Japanese  Folk-song,"  and  so  on.  Except  in 
language  he  is  often  hardly  English  at  all, 
so  transparent  a  medium  does  he  make 
of  himself  for  the  visible  and  invisible 
Japanese  world.  It  is  true  that  to  the  end 
he  could  not  read  a  Japanese  newspaper 
and  could  only  just  write  a  letter  home,49 
but*  as  Professor  Chamberlain  says  :  44  Laf- 

47  B.  F.  265.         «8  B.  F.  60.       "  B.  II.  486. 
69 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

cadio  Hearn  understands  contemporary 
Japan  better  and  makes  us  understand  it 
better,  than  any  other  writer,  because  he 
loves  it  better  "  ; 50  and  Mr.  Noguchi  states 
that  in  all  his  books  there  is  not  one  mis 
spelling  of  a  Japanese  word. 51  He  is  most 
individual  when  he  submits  to  his  favourite 
obsession,  that  of  the  infinite  ancestry  of 
every  soul  and  every  act.  In  "  Dust " 
it  is  the  inspiration  of  a  thin  rapture  of  the 
intellect.  "  We  are,"  he  says,  "  each  and 
all,  infinite  compounds  of  fragments  of 
anterior  lives." 52  His  mind  is  not  "  a  king 
dom  "  but  "  a  fantastical  republic,  daily 
troubled  by  more  revolutions  than  ever 
occurred  in  South  America,"  and  he  ex 
claims  :  "  I,  an  individual ;  an  individual 
soul !  Nay,  I  am  a  population — a  popula 
tion  unthinkable  for  multitude,  even  by 
groups  of  a  thousand  millions  !  Genera 
tions  of  generations  I  am,  aeons  of  aeons  ! 
Countless  times  the  concourse  now  making 
me  has  been  scattered,  and  mixed  with 
other  scatterings.  Of  what  concern,  then, 
the  next  disintegration  ?  Perhaps,  after 
trillions  of  ages  of  burning  in  different 

60  T.  J.  65.  61  N.  v.         52  B.  F.  92. 

70 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

dynasties,  the  very  best  of  me  may  come 
together  again." 

Whether  this  idea  preyed  upon  him,  or 
whether  it  was  simply  his  dislike  of  a  great 
modern  city,  he  was  not  at  ease  writing  in 
Tokyo  in  1897.  He  complained  that  he 
got  "  no  thrill,  no  frisson,  no  sensation," 
that  "the  Holy  Ghost  had  departed" 
from  him :  or  perhaps,  he  says,  "  the 
power  to  feel  thrill  dies  with  the  approach 
of  a  man's  fiftieth  year."  He  felt  his  work 
to  be  poor,  though  it  had  improved  by 
re-writing.  He  was  referring  to  the  "  Retro 
spectives  "  in  Exotics  and  Retrospectives 
of  1898.  He  had  got  back  to  himself  again, 
after  the  long  period  when  the  novelty,  the 
charm,  and  the  abundance  in  Japanese  life 
had  taken  him  out  of  himself  and  supported 
him.  His  work  is  now  more  and  more  a 
collection  of  short  sketches,  reflections, 
and  stories,  quite  distinct  from  one  another, 
not  only  in  Exotics  and  Retrospectives,  but 
in  the  successive  books,  Ghostly  Japan 
(1899),  Shadowings  (1900),  A  Japanese 
Miscellany  (1901),  Kotto  (1902),  Kwaidan 
(1904),  and  the  posthumous  Milky  Way 
(1905).  The  stories  increase  in  number ; 
71 


LAFCADJO   HEARN 

Kwaidan  contains  little  else.  When  he 
writes  anything  beyond  the  length  of  a  very 
short  essay  or  story  it  is  a  string  of  notes 
and  quotations  like  "  Japanese  Buddhist 
Proverbs "  in  Ghostly  Japan,  "  Japanese 
Female  Names  "  in  Shadowing*,  "  Songs  of 
Japanese  Children "  in  the  Miscellany. 
For  many  of  these  he  had  the  valuable  help 
of  his  pupil,  Mr  Otani,  as  collector.  It  is 
to  be  noticed  that  of  all  the  books  published 
between  1898  and  1904,  only  three  chapters 
had  already  appeared  in  American  maga 
zines,  which  had  hitherto  printed  a  con 
siderable  portion  of  Hearn's  essays.  As 
early  as  1893  he  had  said  that  an  inspiration 
or  strong  emotion  was  impossible  in  Japan  : 
that  all  his  work  had  to  be  forced.  In  1895 
he  added  that  writing  was  the  only  antidote 
to  "  vexation  and  anger  and  imaginings 
and  recollections  of  unpleasant  things  said 
or  done."  He  describes  how  he  wrote  every 
thing  at  first  "  hurriedly  without  care,"  M 
and  then  re-wrote  four  or  five  times,  letting 
the  thought  "  define  and  crystallize  it 
self."  The  concluding  paragraphs  of  his 
chapter  on  dragonflies  in  Kotto  was  re- 

63  B.  III.  42. 

72 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

written  seventeen  times.  He  looked  back 
at  his  early  florid  writing  with  shame,  and 
found  himself  "  forced  to  study  simpli 
city,"  54  though  at  first  he  was  alarmed  at 
the  "  lack  of  colour "  in  his  Japanese 
writing ;  he  was  forty-three  but  felt  his 
style  "  not  yet  fixed— too  artificial."  This 
self-criticism  is  just,  though  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  it  helped  or  hindered 
him  ;  for  his  writing  often  suggests  that 
little  good  save  neatness  was  gained  by  his 
labours.  But  the  instinct,  or  the  old  habit 
of  his  Gautier  period,  was  very  strong,  and 
he  could  not  help  "  polishing  up  " 55  passages 
in  his  letters.  That  he  had  a  disturbing 
consciousness  of  the  character  of  words 
would  be  clear  from  one  sentence  in  a  letter 
of  1892,  speaking  of  architecture  :  "  Gothic 
is  soul — or  better  Spirit,  using  the  sharp- 
angled  flame  word."  He  had  long  kept 
note  books  for  "  every  sensation  or  idea," 
every  "  new  and  strong  impression,"  and 
classified  them.  Yet  he  knew  well  that 
"  our  best  work  is  out  of  the  unconscious." 
For  some  writers  the  unconscious  is  strong 
and  full  in  the  first  and  only  form  of  a  book 

54  B.  III.  62.  55  B.  III.  291. 

73 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

or  chapter ;  for  others,  doubtless,  only  in 
the  third  or  tenth  revision.  There  is, 
however,  a  danger  to  those  who  are  over 
much  impressed  by  Flaubert's  sweating  and 
grunting  at  literature,  that  they  may  think 
the  seventeenth  revision  in  any  case  better 
than  the  sixteenth.  It  is  certain  that 
much  of  Hearn's  elaboration  ended  in 
rhetoric  which  leaves  us  cold  and  even  with 
out  admiration.  Such  is  the  "  Re  very  " 
in  Kotto.  In  these  later  essays  he  is  less 
mastered  by  his  subjects  and  has  leisure  to 
elaborate  very  small  things.  He  had  time 
to  use  words  like  "  pulchritude,"  and  to 
speak  of  "  the  enormity  of  day  "  in  igno 
rance  or  rash  carelessness  of  the  customary 
meaning  of  the  word  "  enormity  "  ; 56  he  still 
thought  Pierre  Loti  "  the  world's  greatest 
prose  writer." 57  In  "  Incense "  he  re 
turned  to  his  love  of  precious  catalogues. 
These  are  little  things,  but  the  important 
point  is  that  the  essays  and  reveries  in 
which  they  occur,  like  "  Azure  Psychology," 
"  Parfum  de  Jeunesse,"  "  Nightmare 
Touch,"  leave  us  unmoved  and  therefore 
free  to  observe  trifles  which  would  be  lost 

S6  E.  and  R.  234.  67  S.  88. 

74 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

in  the  sweep  of  a  powerful  thought  or  emo 
tion.  In  "  Vespertina  Cognitio,"  e.g.,  there 
is  nothing  to  blind  us  to  the  absurdity  of 
"  The  stealthy  step  approached,  — but 
with  lentor  malevolently  measured."  Is  it 
possible  that  a  word  like  "  lentor  "  could 
haunt  a  man  who  was  born  to  write  well  ? 
The  writing  has  the  appearance  of  being  a 
quite  conscious  decoration  of  a  subject  of 
which  the  writer  has  exaggerated  the  im 
portance  to  himself.  Even  the  thought  of 
the  past  living  in  the  present,  though  it 
may  have  genuinely  haunted  Hearn,  is 
introduced  time  after  time  with  ineffectual 
monotony,  as  at  the  conclusion  of  "  Fire 
flies  "  in  Kotto.  It  is  less  a  haunting  idea 
than  a  trick,  and  it  has  perhaps  become  so 
through  being  used  too  deliberately.  The 
childish  reminiscences  are  injured  in  the 
same  way.  The  desire  to  impress  is  too 
obvious  for  the  reader  to  feel  the  power. 

From  the  "  Retrospectives "  in  these 
volumes  it  is  a  pleasure  to  turn  to  the 
stories  and  to  the  essays  of  pure  informa 
tion.  Some  of  the  stories  he  calls  "  only 
curios,"  and  they  are  told  definitely  to 
"  illustrate  some  strange  beliefs."  If  he 
75 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

only  fulfilled  this  purpose  they  must  live 
long.  But  he  does  very  much  more.  He 
gives  us  a  large  number  of  stories,  weird, 
romantic,  heroic,  and  horrible,  all  of 
them  with  the  fascination  of  strangeness 
and  yet  made  perfectly  intelligible  to  Eng 
lish  readers.  Some  are  from  books,  some 
from  oral  sources.  It  will  be  long  before 
we  know  how  much  of  them  Hearn  contri 
buted.  To  some  he  may  have  added  little 
or  nothing.  His  great  achievement  is 
harmony  of  tone  ;  his  additions  are  not 
noticeable.  To  a  stranger  they  seem  per 
fectly  Japanese,  though  this  may  only  be  a 
way  of  saying  that  they  are  pure  Lafcadio 
Hearn.  They  read  like  the  most  delicate 
and  modest  of  translations,  whether  he  is 
translating  or  not.  Thus  "  Of  a  Promise 
Kept,"  in  the  Miscellany,  seems  a  good 
translation  of  a  perfect  story,  which  illus 
trates  Japanese  belief  and  character  in  a 
vivid  way.  One  brother  going  a  long  jour 
ney  promises  to  be  back  by  a  certain  day 
when  "  the  chrysanthemums  will  be  in 
bloom  and  we  can  go  together  to  look  at 
them."  When  that  day  arrived,  they  pre 
pared  a  feast.  As  the  evening  grew  and 
76 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

the  traveller  had  not  returned,  the  mother 
went  to  bed.  The  brother  kept  a  look  out 
but  was  about  to  re-enter  the  house  for 
the  last  time  when  he  saw  a  tall  man — yes  ! 
his  brother,  Akana.  He  came  in  and  sat 
down,  but  touched  neither  food  nor  wine. 
He  explained  his  lateness.  He  had  been 
kept  back  forcibly  by  a  cousin  at  the  com 
mand  of  a  tyrannical  lord.  He  had  hoped 
to  escape  from  the  castle  in  time,  but 
"  until  to-day  "  he  could  not  find  a  way. 
His  brother  was  incredulous,  for  it  was  two 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  away.  "  Yes," 
he  answered,  but  a  soul  can  go  a  thousand 
leagues  a  day,  and  he  had  been  allowed  to 
keep  his  sword.  "  Thus  only  was  I  able  to 
come  to  you.  ...  Be  good  to  our  mother." 
Then  he  disappeared.  The  brother  went 
to  the  castle  and  killed  the  treacherous 
cousin  in  the  midst  of  his  family,  and  es 
caped  alive  because  the  lord  admired  the 
friendship  and  courage  of  the  two  men. 
The  "  curios  "  of  Kotto,  the  "  Stories  from 
Strange  Books  "  in  Shadowings,  the  tales 
scattered  through  Ghostly  Japan  and  almost 
filling  Kwaidan,  certainly  make  up  one  of 
the  greatest  treasures  ever  found  by  a 
77 


LAFCADIO   HEARN 

translator  in  an  utterly  foreign  land.  Their 
beauty,  their  splendour,  tenderness  or 
horror  is  not  to  be  denied,  whether  readers 
care  much  or  nothing  for  Japan.  Most  are 
told  without  any  interruption  from  the 
translator,  and  exist  by  themselves,  with 
just  that  slight  something  absent  which 
suggests  the  translation  from  a  remote 
language.  A  few,  like  the  "  Story  of 
Divination,"  in  Ghostly  Japan,  are  intro 
duced  by  Hearn  in  person.  This  story, 
e.g.,  was  taken  from  an  old  fortune-teller 
whom  he  knew — a  man  with  "  a  love  of 
independence  as  savage  as  a  gypsy's  "  who 
would  never  stay  more  than  two  days  at  a 
time  with  Hearn.  The  story  is  of  a  famous 
fortune-teller  living  in  a  mountain  hut 
with  a  tile  for  a  pillow.  One  day  a  rat 
wakened  him  and  he  flung  the  tile  at  it  and 
broke  it.  As  he  was  reproaching  himself 
he  saw  writing  exposed  by  the  fracture  in 
the  tile,  saying  :  "  In  the  year  of  the  Hare 
in  the  fourth  month,  on  the  seventeenth 
day,  at  the  Hour  of  the  Serpent,  this  tile, 
after  serving  as  a  pillow,  will  be  thrown  at 
a  rat  and  broken."  He  discovered  the  seal 
and  name  of  the  maker,  and  seeking  him 
78 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

out  learnt  that  an  old  fortune-teller  had 
written  the  characters  in  the  clay.  He 
went  in  search  of  this  man  but  arrived  to 
hear  that  he  was  just  dead.  The  visitor 
was,  however,  not  unexpected,  and  at  that 
very  hour.  A  book  had  been  left  for  him 
and  in  it  he  read  about  a  treasure  hidden 
near  his  own  hut.  He  found  it  and  became 
a  very  wealthy  man.  As  to  Hearn's  old 
friend,  he  was  found  dead  in  the  snow, 
standing  erect  at  the  foot  of  a  pine  upon  the 
mountains ;  and  Hearn  remembered  the 
Japanese  saying :  "  The  fortune-teller 
knows  not  his  own  fate." 58  The  style  of 
these  stories,  translations  or  not,  is  never, 
or  practically  never,  disfigured  by  signs  of 
uninspired  labour  like  the  essays  :  in  them 
he  has  learnt  to  sacrifice  the  part  to  the 
whole.  It  is  a  plain,  lucid,  unnoticeable 
style,  a  little  stiff  and  lacking  in  movement 
and  natural  continuity,  but  for  the  most 
part  leaving  the  reader  free  to  listen  to 
speeches  and  watch  events. 

The  informing  essays  are  almost  equally 
good  of  their  kind,  though  they  make  room 
occasionally  for  phrases  like  that  in  the 

68  O.  J.  49. 
79 


LAFCADIO   HEARN 

description  of  a  street  of  shops,  "  full 
of  toys  indescribable — dainty  puerilities, 
fragile  astonishments,  laughter  -  making 
oddities." 59  He  is  a  little  stiff  in  his  manner, 
saying,  for  example :  "  Before  speaking 
further  of  the  poetical  literature  of  semi,  I 
must  attempt  a  few  remarks  about  the 
se*mi  themselves."  60  The  Miscellany  is  full 
of  interesting  and  often  charming  things, 
as  in  the  "  Songs  of  Japanese  Children," 
songs  relating  to  weather  and  sky  and  ani 
mals,  play  songs,  narratives,  and  lullabies  : 
or  as  in  the  "  Dragonflies,"  where  he  gives 
many  examples  of  tiny  poems  suggested  by 
dragonflies,  such  as  that  famous  one : 
"  Catching  dragonflies — I  wonder  where 
he  has  gone  to-day  "  (the  words  uttered  by 
a  mother  thinking  of  a  dead  child  who 
used  to  play  at  catching  dragonflies). 
It  is  the  custom  to  write  poems  for  a  con 
solation  in  trouble,  and  in  Kotto  Hearn 
quotes  several  by  a  simple  woman  of  the 
people,  as  they  occur  in  a  diary  of  her 
married  life  which  he  is  translating.  These 
essays  of  information,  with  their  notes, 
touch  so  many  different  matters  in  so  many 
6»  E.  and  R.  40.  60  S.  78. 
80 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

different  ways  that  a  knowledge  of  them 
would  mean  a  deep  knowledge  of  Japan. 
The  "  Japanese  Buddhist  Proverbs,"  e.g., 
are  richer  in  suggestion  than  some  of 
Hearn's  rhapsodical  meditations  in  achieve 
ment  ;  and  this  is  a  comparison  which  can 
fairly  be  made,  say  in  the  case  of  the 
proverb  :  "  Even  the  touching  of  sleeves 
in  passing  is  caused  by  some  relation  in  a 
future  life."  81  After  some  of  these  pro 
verbs  it  is  not  easy  to  enjoy  his  rapture 
upon  the  belief  that  "  all  being  is  One. 
One  I  felt  myself  to  be  with  the  thrilling 
of  breeze  and  the  racing  of  wave — with 
every  flutter  of  shadow  and  flicker  of  sun — 
with  the  azure  of  sky  and  sea — with  the 
great  green  bush  of  the  land  "  ; 62  one  with 
the  fire,  for  he  asks  :  "  Have  you  never, 
when  looking  at  some  great  burning,  found 
yourself  exulting  with  remorse  in  the 
triumph  and  glory  of  fire."  83 .  .  .  "  Beside 
the  Sea  "  in  the  Miscellany  shows  us  that 
in  spite  of  his  rapture  about  the  One  he 
could  still  be  very  tender  over  "  the  poor 
dead "  and  could  not  convince  himself 
"  that  even  the  grosser  substance  of  van- 

61  (?.  J,  191.        62  Kot.  182.     as  E.  and  R.  180. 
81  F 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

ished  being  ever  completely  dies,  however 
dissolved  or  scattered — fleeting  in  the  gale 
— floating  in  the  mists,"  etc. 

In  1903  he  was  writing  a  series  of  chap 
ters  on  Japan  "  from  the  standpoint  of 
ancestor- worship."  At  first  he  thought  to 
use  them  as  lectures  in  the  United  States, 
but  in  1904  they  were  published  under  the 
title  of  "  Japan :  an  attempt  at  inter 
pretation."  He  was  afraid  of  the  "  real 
sociologist's "  opinion ;  thinking  that  he 
ought  to  stick  to  "  birds  and  cats,  insects 
and  flowers,  and  queer  small  things  "  ;  and 
certainly  it  needed  a  superhuman  effort  for 
a  man  who  saw  the  multitudes  of  little 
things  from  close  at  hand,  to  try  to  see  the 
proportioned  whole.  Fortunately  the  book 
is  substantial  enough  not  to  depend  entirely 
upon  breadth  of  view.  For  he  put  into  it 
the  main  results  of  his  reading  of  Japanese 
life  and  books,  and  made  it  probably  the 
best  single  book,  not  a  work  of  reference, 
upon  Japan.  He  begins  by  recognizing 
the  charm  of  a  land  where  "  every  relation 
appears  to  be  governed  by  altruism,  every 
action  directed  by  duty,  and  every  object 
shaped  by  art,"  where  "  for  no  little  time 
82 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

these  fairy  folk  can  give  you  all  the  soft 
bliss  of  sleep."84  His  business  is  with  the 
nation  which  has  "  entered  into  the  world's 
political  struggle  "  ;  but  in  "  The  Higher 
Buddhism  "  he  again  points  out  that  "  some 
Buddhist  ideas  offer  the  most  startling 
analogy  with  the  evolutional  ideas  of  our 
own  time,"  and  also  that  there  is  no  scien 
tific  counterpart  to  the  belief  that  thoughts 
and  deeds  affect  not  only  the  next  rebirth 
but  "  the  nature  of  worlds  yet  unevolved, 
wherein,  after  innumerable  cycles,  you 
may  have  to  live  again."  He  makes  also 
the  personal  statement  that  Spencer  helped 
him  to  see  in  Buddhist  philosophy  more 
than  a  romantic  interest.65  He  is,  however, 
more  often  concerned  with  Shinto.  He 
shows  us  the  development  of  the  well-con 
ducted  family  where  the  daily  life  "  repre 
sents  religion  in  the  best  and  purest  sense," 
united  under  the  blessed  shadow  of  an 
cestors,  "  the  makers  and  teachers  of  the 
present."  He  suggests  that  three  thou 
sand  years  ago  life  in  a  Greek  city  was 
severe  and  cheerful,  much  like  this  Japanese 
life.  And  the  family  piety  extends  and 

64  J.  18.         66  j,  232. 
83 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

by  a  natural  process  becomes  "  the  loyalty 
that  prays  for  seven  successive  lives  to  lay 
down  on  behalf  of  the  sovereign."  66  In 
obedience  to  an  imperial  order  the  nation 
offered  itself  up  to  a  reconstruction  which 
has  made  it  within  thirty  years  formidable 
among  "  modern  civilized  powers."  This 
power  she  owed  to  "  the  moral  habit  de 
rived  from  her  ancient  cult — the  religion 
of  the  ancestors  " 67  — a  religion  which  was 
inseparable  from  government  and  tradi 
tional  ideas.  He  forecasted  that  Russia 
would  have  to  fear  this  power  more  than 
repeating  rifles  : 68  he  also  expressed  a  fear 
lest  success  in  a  struggle  with  Russia 
should  give  Japan  confidence  to  allow 
right  of  land  tenure  to  foreigners,  by  means 
of  which  foreign  capital,  he  thought,  must 
triumph,  and  the  country  be  lost.  "  Be 
hind  her  military  capacity,"  he  explains, 
"  is  the  disciplined  experience  of  a  thousand 
years ;  behind  her  industrial  and  com 
mercial  power,  the  experience  of  half  a  cen 
tury."  69  This,  however,  is  a  purely  scientific 
argument  and  may  well  be  overthrown  by 
the  greater  subtlety  of  facts.  He  shows  at 

66  J.  58.     67  J.  412.     M  J.  507.     69  J.  510. 

84 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

what  a  cost — to  Western  eyes — this  dis 
ciplined  power  has  been  achieved.  For 
example,  a  man's  house  is  not  "  his  castle," 
for  to  close  it  would  be  to  insult  the  com 
munity.  There  is  no  privacy,  and  "  the 
slightest  divergence  from  rule,"  70  is  frowned 
on.  But  on  the  other  hand  the  community 
has  a  voice  in  more  than  daily  conduct. 
For  example,  the  principal  of  a  college 
"  holds  his  office  only  on  the  condition  that 
his  rule  gives  satisfaction  to  a  majority  of 
the  students." 71  When  Hearn  was  dis 
missed  from  the  University  there  was  an 
attempted  agitation  among  the  students  to 
reinstate  him.  The  same  force  forbids 
competition.  Even  the  swift  jinrikisha- 
man  may  not  pass  the  weak  and  slow,  or  if 
he  dares  to,  the  angry  appeal  to  him  may  be 
translated,  says  Hearn  :  "  This  is  a  hard 
calling ;  and  our  lives  would  be  made 
harder  than  they  are,  if  there  were  no  rules 
to  prevent  selfish  competition." 72  But 
while  admiring  this,  Hearn  sees  an  impass 
able  gulf  between  it  and  the  European 
civilization  with  "  unlimited  individual 
right "  to  starve  or  purchase  a  peerage. 

70  J.   112.     71  J.  437.     72  J.  440. 
85 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

Hearn  saw  the  horrors  of  this  free  society, 
but  dreaded  Socialism,  which  he  called  a 
"  reversion  toward  the  primitive  conditions 
of  human  society." 73     He  foresaw  centuries 
of  effort  needed  to  burst "  the  fetters  which 
Socialism  now  seeks  to  impose  on  human 
society." 74     He    foresaw    "  a    democracy 
more  brutal  than  any  Spartan  oligarchy  "  ; 75 
within  twenty  years  (of  1904)  a  man  would 
only  write  what  he  was  told :  76  and  this  he 
confused  with  Socialism.     As  for  Japan  he 
held  it  to  be  obvious  that  "  any  society 
where   ethical   traditions   forbid  the   indi 
vidual  to  profit  at  the  cost  of  his  fellow- 
men  will  be  placed  at  an  enormous  dis 
advantage   when  faced  with  the  industrial 
struggle  for  existence  against  communities 
whose  self-government  permits  of  the  widest 
possible  freedom,  and  the  widest  range  of 
competitive    enterprise." 77     In  this    he    is 
supported  by  a  letter  from  Spencer  (quoted 
in   an   appendix)    offering   to   a   Japanese 
statesman  the  advice  to  keep  Americans 
and  Europeans  "  as  much  as  possible  at 
arm's  length,"  to  forbid,  for  example,  the 

73  J.  279.  74  B.  II.  184. 

75  B.  II.  205.     '«  B.  II.  512.       77  J.  279. 

86 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

intermarriage  of  foreigners  and  Japanese, 
and  this  on  the  ground  that  "  the  result  is 
inevitably  a  bad  one  in  the  long  run." 
Hearn  follows  with  a  concluding  comment, 
saying  that  "  in  another  generation  Japan 
will  be  able,  without  peril,  to  abandon  much 
of  her  conservatism ;  but,  for  the  time 
being,  her  conservatism  is  her  salvation." 78 
He  just  lived  to  see  the  sure  promise  of  her 
triumph  over  Russia,  and  to  record  in  one 
of  his  last  essays  "  the  joyous  tone  of  public 
confidence  " — "  the  playful  confidence  " — 
"  the  admirably  restrained  pride  of  the 
nation  in  its  victories." 79  He  died  on 
September  28,  1904.  The  "Interpreta 
tion  "  can  only  be  judged  by  sociologists 
and  by  the  greatest  of  them,  Time.  It 
was  an  extraordinary  effort — Mrs.  Hearn 
tells  us  of  his  long  struggles — to  express 
what  one  man  could  not  possibly  grasp, 
especially  one  who  knew,  as  he  said  himself, 
enough  about  Japan  to  know  that  he  knew 
nothing.  He  did  violence  to  himself  by 
the  asceticism  of  subduing  for  the  purpose 
of  this  book  a  great  part  of  himself  and  of 
what  he  had  taken  to  be  himself.  The 

78  J.  534.  ™  M.  W.  183. 

87 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

most  he  allows  himself  is  a  catalogue  now 
and  then  and  a  brief  picture  of  a  dance  or 
of  a  scene  from  the  wild  Oki  coast — "  the 
naked  figure  of  a  young  fisherman  erect 
at  the  prow  of  his  boat,  clapping  his  hands 
in  salutation  to  the  rising  sun,  whose 
ruddy  glow  transformed  him  into  a  statue  of 
bronze."  80  There  is  perhaps  not  a  single 
example  in  the  book  of  his  characteristic 
bad  writing,  though  in  The  Milky  Way 
he  showed  himself  still  capable  of  using 
"  facile  "  simply  as  a  synonym  for  "  easy." 
But  the  book  is  more  than  the  marvellous 
tour  de  force  of  a  writer  about  "  cats  and 
birds  and  little  things."  His  other  books 
give  scattered  impressions,  this  an  abstract 
of  them  arranged  and  extended  under  the 
guidance  of  a  scientific  spirit ;  and  it  is  hard 
to  imagine  a  better  book  which  is  neither 
a  cyclopaedia  nor  a  traveller's  bird's-eye 
view.  Hearn  knew  too  much  and  was  too 
sober  for  the  bird's-eye  view  and  was  un 
prepared  to  immolate  himself  in  a  cyclo 
paedia  ;  but  his  compromise,  taken  with 
the  stories,  the  studies,  the  impressions, 
and  the  articles  of  pure  information,  pre- 

80  J.  152. 

88 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

sents  a  marvellously  detailed  picture  which 
is  yet  always  and  everywhere  alive.  The 
personality  of  the  writer  is  in  his  best  work 
shown  by  his  abnegation  of  personality, 
though  this  was  probably  due  to  no  con 
scious  effort :  the  effort  was  needed  rather 
to  obtrude  it.  We  can  perhaps  never  be 
sure  whether  he  really  had  reconciled  in  his 
heart,  as  a  French  critic  has  said,  the  science 
of  the  West  and  the  religion  of  the  East ; 
but  his  books  set  them  side  by  side  or 
inextricably  mingled  in  a  manner  both 
useful  and  attractive.  No  one  has  done 
more  to  "  remind  Europe  of  the  importance 
of  Eastern  civilization."  Professor  Cham 
berlain  testified  to  the  "  scientific  accuracy 
of  detail  "  and  the  "  tender  and  exquisite 
brilliancy  of  style,"  in  these  pictures  of 
"  Japanese  life,  manners,  thoughts,  aspira 
tions,  the  student-class,  the  singing  girls, 
the  politicians  .  .  .  not  men  only  but 
ghosts  and  folk-lore  fancies,  the  scenery  of 
remote  islands  which  Hearn  alone  among 
Europeans  has  ever  trod,"  81  everything  in 
fact,  except  "  the  humorous  side  of  native 
life  "  :  to  expect  humour  from  so  solitary 

81  T.  J.  65. 
89 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

and  pitiful  a  man  would  be  unreasonable. 
Mr.  Yone  Noguchi  says  that  the  Japanese 
were  "  regenerated  by  his  sudden  magic, 
and  baptized  afresh  under  his  transcen 
dental  rapture  ;  in  fact,  the  old  romances 
which  we  had  forgotten  ages  ago  were 
brought  again  to  quiver  in  the  ear,  and  the 
ancient  beauty  which  we  buried  under  the 
dust  rose  again  with  a  strange  yet  new  splen 
dour  ; "  82  an(j  he  foresees  that  Hearn's 
books  will  be  an  inspiration  in  Japanese 
literature.  He  became,  says  Mr.  Noguchi, 
a  Japanese  writer,  and  I  sometimes  feel 
that  with  Japanese  writers  he  should  be 
compared.  The  material  in  which  he 
worked  is  still  so  foreign  to  most  of  us  that 
it  is  not  easy  to  say  how  much  is  his  in  the 
stories,  for  example,  which  are  his  finest 
work.  I  have  said  that  they  are  like 
choice  translations.  He  has  been  accused 
of  submitting  himself  in  a  passiveness  more 
pure  than  wise  to  Japanese  influence ; 
but  the  blind  minnow  cannot  assume  the 
colour  of  its  environment.  Personality  of 
the  vivid  militant  kind  is  just  now  wor 
shipped,  and  the  silver  grey  is  hidden 

82  N.  17. 
90 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 

from  us.  Some  day  it  may  be  discovered 
that  what  we  think  is  Japanese  in  his 
work  is  really  Hearn,  shorn  of  his  French 
romanticism.  Certainly  he  has  either  im 
posed  on  us  a  personal  impression  of 
Japanese  things  not  the  less  deep  for  its 
delicacy,  or  he  has  made  himself  a  mirror 
in  a  manner  unapproached  by  other 
observers  of  foreign  countries.  To  impute 
observation  to  his  maturest  work  is  an 
insult ;  he  had  become  the  thing  observed  : 
he  was  a  Japanese  writer  "  in  perfect  accord 
with  the  sweet  glamour  of  Old  Japan," 83 
to  use  again  the  words  of  Mr.  Noguchi, 
whose  fine  Japanese  mind  has  not  been 
clouded  by  the  acquisition  of  a  beautiful 
English  style. 

83  N.  5. 


Butler  &  Tanner,  Froinc  and  London. 


WORKS     BY 

LAFCADIO    HEARN. 


The  Romance  of    the  Milky  Way  and  other  Studies 

and  Stories.    Crown  8vo.,  55.  net. 

"  The  book  is  full  of  "prettiness  .  .  .  not  a  page  is  without  its  charm 
and  beauty." — Athenaeum. 

Letters    from    the    Raven.     The    Correspondence    of 

Lafcadio  Hearn  with  Henry  Watkin.  Edited  with  an  intro 
duction  by  MILTON  BRONNER.  Illustrated.  Crown  8vo, 
55.  net. 

"  The  book  is  a  pleasant  one,  attractively  commemorative  of  a  highly 
gifted  writer." — Globe. 

"  These  Letters  are  rich  in  sidelights  on  Eastern  civilization.  .  .  . 
The  book  is  a  veritable  human  document." — The  Standard. 

Life  and  Letters  of  Lafeadio  Hearn.     Edited  by  ELIZA 
BETH  BISLAND.    2  vols.    Illustrated.    Demy  8vo.,  245.  net. 

"  A  wholly  delightful  book  put  together  just  as  such  a  book  should 
be — allowed  to  tell  its  own  tale." — Queen. 

The  Japanese  Letters  of  Lafcadio  Hearn.     Edited  by 

ELIZABETH  BISLAND.     Illustrated.     Demy  8vo,  125.  net. 

This  collection  of  the  Correspondence  of  Lufcadio  Hearn  contains  the 
fullest  expression  of  his  ternpfirameo.c,  his  views  on  life,  methods  of 
work,  etc.  Tlie  volume  is  fully  illustrated,  in  part  from  Hearn's  own 
sketches  of  Japanase  -scenss,  wwi.  uniform  with- the  "  Life  and  Letters 
of  LafcadJo^Heara.''  .  -  . 

"  The  book  is  a  rare  feast  for  readers  who  are  fond  of  a  good  letter 
writer." — Scotsman. 

"  The  charm  and  fancy  and  humour  which  illumine  these  admirable 
letters.  Everywhere  are  fascinating  glimpses  such  as  no  one  else  has 
given  us,  and  no  one  else  will  ever  give  us  of  the  Japan  which  is  fast 
becoming  merely  a  great  power  like  the  rest  of  us." — Observer. 


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